THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
In Grenoble, at the Guynemer professional high school, there has been a class of 3 since 2012e unique in France, which each year offers around fifteen teenagers who are severely dropping out of school the opportunity to link them to a professional qualification project, by obtaining a CAP, or even a professional baccalaureate. Baptized “Starter”, this system was created and coordinated by Antoine Gentil who, to say the least, surrounded by a handful of associated teachers, pays his person to pull these young people up in difficulty. Agnès and Xabi Molia, she a documentary filmmaker, he a director and a novelist, settled in class and followed the process implemented to do so for a year. It should be noted that the duo of directors, brother and sister in the city, had previously done some scouting during the two school years preceding their filming.
This long immersion – restored by the choice of the “Scope” and the sequence shot – allows the film to capture more closely the efficiency and, why save words, the dazzling success of the project. It consists of a well-balanced mix of active partnership with companies and intensive support for students, both psychological and educational. It’s the least, you’ll think, except that the film, it’s its great virtue, highlights what it takes resolution, stubbornness, patience and benevolence to achieve this minimum . This means straight away that the true hero of this film – in line with the teacher Georges Lopez in the famous To be and to Have (2002) by Nicolas Philibert – is Antoine Gentil, whose energy, omnipresence, combativeness, quality of listening, pedagogical requirement and intelligence finally magnetize the setting.
positive energy
Largely dependent on this preponderance, the staging must nonetheless distribute the other roles or, to put it better, since it is also a documentary that is involved, seize what the subjects filmed want to give it to him. These are, of course, the parents, regularly called upon by the teaching staff to reinforce their support strategy, and therefore present in the film. These are, even more, a few “characters” (Tamara, Nels, Ziyad) who quickly form within the group of students, whose vicissitudes and evolution, whims and depression, hopes and joys too structure the story, under the sign of the most complete uncertainty about what they will do with themselves at the end of the year, and therefore of the film.
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