by Pat F.

Ilker Çatak, Germany 2023

A young teacher full of ideals and principles, Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) struggles to survive her first-year teaching seventh graders in Anywhere, Germany. Though filmed in Hamburg, Ilker Çatak deliberately avoids such familiar landmarks as the scenic harbor or the towering Elbphilharmonie All the action takes place in the school, except for a brief scene in which Carla pursues a runaway student.

The film begins in Carla’s classroom where the students, though middle schoolers, tolerate her enthusiastic call/response and clapping attention getters; they settle down quickly ready to learn. They like their pretty, young math/PE teacher who goes out of her way to promote honesty, fairness, tolerance, and respect in the classroom. Things are perfect in Carla’s classroom. However, things are not right in the rest of the school which maintains a no tolerance policy on theft. Someone is stealing money, and the indomitable headmistress Dr. Böhm (Anne-Kathrin Gummich) is determined to find the perpetrator. There is suspicion it is someone in Carla’s class. Every single principle Carla believes in is subtly undermined. Mistrust, deceit, racism all starting at the top of the school trickle down to her seventh graders. Feeling overwhelmed, overpowered, and disrespected, she plays detective with her computer’s video camera to try to discover who has been stealing money in the school. Though her star pupil Oskar (brilliantly played by Leonard Stettnisch) is not in the video he gets ensnarled in the investigation, is bullied, then suspended from school. What had once been a happy nurturing seventh grade classroom has turned into a den of intolerance, insolence, and mistrust.

As a teacher of more than forty years, what I found deeply disturbing was watching Carla losing the trust of her students, their parents, and her colleagues as her isolation deepens. There is nothing overtly evil going on in the school. But just scratch beneath the surface.