Think School(2015)

La langue est donc une histoire d'amour(fr)

Beginning Responsibility: A Lunchroom Goes Bananas(en)

The food in Plumcrest School Cafeteria has gone on strike to protest the poor lunchroom manners of the children! After Banana issues a two-week ultimatum, the students take some positive steps toward better lunchroom manners.

Po pionýrsku vpřed(cs)

A picture of the ceremonial opening of the new school year.

Eine geschlossene Gesellschaft(de)

Follows the lives of students and their teachers based on the director's childhood memories. The events of the film take places in the actual boarding school called "Gymnasium Canisianum", founded in 1946 by a German catholic priest.

Rise Above the Mark(en)

The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations.

First Case, Second Case(fa)

A documentary about a teacher who sends a group of pupils out of the classroom when one of them does not own up to talking behind the master's back.

Oyler(en)

A Cincinnati public school fights to break the cycle of poverty in its Urban Appalachian neighborhood, where senior Raven Gribbins aims to become the first in her troubled family to graduate and go to college. When Principal Craig Hockenberry's job is threatened, it becomes clear it's a make-or-break year for both of them.

Pride of Place(en)

In this first project of Kim Longinotto while she was a student at Englands National School of Television and Film she filmed the daily life in a girls boarding school situated in an old isolated castle in Buckinghamshire. Until she was 17, Longinotto lived in this boarding school, finaly she run away from there. In this dark and expressive black and white documentary, Longinotto exposes the repressive school from the students perspective. It seems to be a kind of miniature state with bizzare rules, idigestibel food and absurd punishments. The documentary begins with an graduation ceremony. The director blows her own trumpet, afterwards the film describes the daily routine of schoollife. The film ends up with the students leaving for holidays. As a result of this documentary, the boarding school was closed down one year after the release of the film.

Grandfather's Father(lv)

In this film a young man and his curmudgeonly grandfather are going 1,800 km to northern Russia in an old Zhiguli car, hoping to find the grave of their great-grandfather, who was deported. The grandfather Andris is sceptic over the lofty quest, initiated by his grand-son, as it’s not known what awaits them at their destination. Andris thinks they won’t find anything and will come back to Latvia without ever learning what happened to his father. However ever-optimistic Kārlis wants to use the journey not only to find answers about the past but also become closer to his grandfather who raised him. They both lost their parents as children.

Let the Child Be the Guide(fr)

As a young father, watching his daughter go through her life experiences, film director Alexandre Mourot discovered the Montessori approach and decided to set his camera up in a children's house (3 to 6 years of age) in the oldest Montessori school in France. Alexandre was warmly welcomed in a surprisingly calm and peaceful environment, filled with flowers, fruits and Montessori materials. He met happy children, who were free to move about, working alone or in small groups. The teacher remained very discreet. Some children were reading, others were making bread, doing division, laughing or sleeping. The children guided the film director throughout the whole school year, helping him to understand the magic of their autonomy and self-esteem - the seeds of a new society of peace and freedom, which Maria Montessori dedicated her life work to.

Teaching War(cs)

This episode from the Czech Journal series examines how a military spirit is slowly returning to our society. Attempts to renew military training or compulsory military service and in general to prepare the nation for the next big war go hand in hand with society’s fear of the Russians, the Muslims, or whatever other “enemies”. This observational flight over the machine gun nest of Czech militarism becomes a grotesque, unsettling military parade. It can be considered not only to be a message about how easily people allow themselves to be manipulated into a state of paranoia by the media, but also a warning against the possibility that extremism will become a part of the regular school curriculum.

Wordsmiths(lv)

Vārdotājas (Wordsmiths) traces the recent rise of women's stand-up comedy in Latvia, but it is by no means just for laughs. Feelings of discomfort, shame, shock, are just some of the subjects tackled.

Deux Cancres(en)

A father films the daily efforts and struggle of his son to do his homework. Completing the school tasks is an agony that oppresses the creative passion of a restless, imaginative boy. His father gets deeply involved so he can understand what the problem is, and spends an hour every day to help him with his homework. Days, weeks, years go by, and we observe how the eagerness to learn clashes with the ghost of school dropout. The endearing relationship between father and son, a real rollercoaster of emotions, reveals with a sense of humour the contradictions in the French education system.

To Be and to Have(fr)

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

A, B, C... Z(sq)

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

One-room School(cs)

Grecia from Venezuela, Linda from Vietnam and Andriy from Ukraine are pupils of META, an inclusive school that supports the integration of young migrants into Czech society. Their families were brought to the Czech Republic by different circumstances and each of them has different ideas about their own future. While eighteen-year-old Andriy, an ambitious boxer, wants to become independent as soon as possible, and Grecia, an artistically gifted student, would like to get into an art high school, Linda is still not sure what she wants to do with her education and career. The time-lapse documentary engagingly captures an important stage in the lives of young people for whom not only the language barrier, but also the long-term lockdown due to the coronavirus epidemic is an obstacle.

Revúcki discipuli(sk)

A semi-dramatized documentary about the first Slovak grammar school in Revúca.

Education Week(xx)

Young scholars get busy for Newcastle-on-Tyne's 'Education Week' in the tour of Tyneside classrooms.

Ultimo giorno di scuola(it)

During his stay in Italy, Harlan accepted a commission from Rai and created a ruthless portrait of society through an archetypal setting. This film, set in a Roman school and filmed inside a classroom during a lesson, is a ruthless portrait of students and Italian society after the end of the protest movements of previous years.

Elementary(fr)

In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts, children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach, they also educate. With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only responsible citizens but also human beings.