High school classroom

The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It is an improvisational, documentary-style drama that captures over a year of classroom scenes in a Parisian school. The film uses real teachers and students to focus on the theme of teacher-student relationships. It tightly focuses on every move within this classroom, without shifting to the students' lives or the teachers' situations outside of school. Even though it all happens in the classroom, it still provides a rich snapshot of the current multi-ethnic population phenomenon in France.

The protagonist is a caring French teacher who treats his students well and strives to overcome the violent nature, impulsive attitudes, and lack of discipline displayed by many of his students. The classroom is often noisy, and he struggles to maintain control in front of these overly individualistic children. However, he has the power to make the children interested in language and words.

As time passes, some issues gradually surface. There's a conflict with a Caribbean black girl who was expelled from her home. The reason is that she refused to read Anne Frank's diary aloud and wrote a long letter accusing the teacher of disrespecting her. As the film progresses, the plot revolves around a boy from Mali. His increasingly unruly behavior in the classroom becomes harder to manage. When he learns through a classmate that the teacher called him dull during a faculty meeting, he becomes furious and attempts to attack the teacher, which could lead to his expulsion from school.

Fran is a French literature teacher in an ordinary Paris middle school. This school is located in an area with a poor surrounding environment and bad public security. The children in the school come from different races and cultural backgrounds, naturally making them restless. Fran's teaching is neither boring nor too strict. He is straightforward and often surprises his students. However, his classroom rules seem to be under scrutiny as his students begin to challenge his teaching methods. One day, a black student injures a classmate in the classroom, and in a moment of panic, the teacher utters a racially discriminatory curse word. The student faces expulsion, and the teacher faces review by the school committee.