Arquivo

This elegant documentary, truly in praise of collective learning and respect one for another, sets us in place of children in a complete process of development of knowledge and personal identity. Before he decided on the small school in the heart of Auvergne where he filmed his documentary, director Nicolas Philibert researched over 300 establishments in all of France. Adept to a model of learning that has today fallen practically in disuse, the lyceum on the movie is a school for all of the children in the village around one sole teacher who follows along with them from kindergarten until the last year of elementary school. Discretely, the director limits his task to accompanying a group of students in their transition from the family environment to an ambience where what is taken into account is their individuality without presuppositions. In fact, building a personality. Life is in the statements by the children, in their hesitation, their mischief and, also, in their failures, making for one of the magic moments of a documentary: to allow fiction embedded in the layers of the real to shine through.