Flicks @ Lopdell 'School Life'

Friday October 2nd 10-30am /6pm / 8-15pm
This event is going ahead under level 2 restrictions (limited seating available with social distancing-bookings essential)

'SCHOOL LIFE' Comedy/Drama 112mins / M / France (Releases in NZ Cinemas on the 17th Sept(....thanks to Limelight Films

The new vice-principal of a middle school in Parisian suburb Saint-Denis, Samia (Zita Hanrot) is warned by her fellow teachers that the students are unmotivated and hard to discipline. She sees things differently, however, when she gets to know the students, especially Yanis (Liam Pierron), who's sharp and driven but disillusioned by a world that seems to have turned its back on him and his family.

​Directors Fabien Marsaud, aka slam-poet and rapper Grand Corps Malade, and Mehdi Idir, a hip-hop dancer, are both Saint-Denis homeboys; they’ve based their screenplay on their own experiences in middle school in a town known for its high crime rate and numerous drug busts. The duo’s excellent first film together, 2017’s Patients, is drawn from Malade’s own experience in a hospital after a dive into a shallow swimming pool left him comatose for three months and paralyzed (a year in rehab helped him recover the use of his legs). School Life reaps the benefits of the duo’s emotional investment in the story they’re telling. They achieve a documentary-like authenticity through the anarchy of the classroom scenes that burst with life often missing in the more traditional subplots. And Hanrot’s funny, scrappy, fully-committed performance fulfils their trust in letting a female educator with a fire to make a difference carry their movie to a winning finish.