Entre les murs (Collection Folio (Gallimard))

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The other, which received the coveted Palme d'Or (although Gomorra is a tad more riveting), is Laurent Cantet's The Class (the original French title translates as Between the Walls), which some described as the new Dead Poets Society for obvious reasons. The Class is based on an autobiographical novel by author and former teacher François Bégaudeau, about working at a tough multi-ethnic school in the Parisian banlieux. Winner of a Palme d'Or at Cannes last year and now up for an Oscar, The Class is a compelling film about teenagers at an inner-city Parisian school. Then Laurent would say something like 'I want you to be more attentive', so I would do that and he would say 'Yes, like that, like what you just did'. The film has received critical acclaim, achieving a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes out of 161 reviews counted, and an average rating of 8.

The magic of The Class is of course that it doesn't feel like a movie, but like something real, tangible - a slice of life, if you may. This dialogue consists in sharing the pieces of truth that every single individual, students and teachers alike, have gathered in their lives. Neither side gives ground, and yet the fact that François has to argue it out on the asphalt, on equal terms, is a kind of humbling, a swallowing of pride.This insistence on showing things as they really are extended to the multicultural make-up of the class - for many of the teenage actors the film provided an opportunity for a positive portrayal of a neighbourhood more usually associated with the 2007 riots in the Paris suburbs. The classroom itself becomes the microcosmic stage on which the action is played out, and the cameras never leave the school. After a disciplinary hearing at which Souleymane is supported by his mother, for whom he has to translate, he is ultimately expelled. In François's class, Esmeralda (Esmeralda Ouertani) and Khoumba (Rachel Regulier) predominate: they are smart but moody, idle and subversive, and just savvy enough about François's liberal scruples to wind him up.

Though we certainly have moments when Marin delves into a moral tangent, I cannot say that he emerges as the unquestioned hero in the way that protagonists in other films do. I think the film is about showing you that you can have arguments but, at the end of the school year, a class always finishes in harmony. Teacher movies throughout the years have instructed us to expect some kind of inspirational, uplifting moment to occur before the credits roll, but The Class doesn't offer us that easy get-out; some students have learned nothing at all, and some have been lost forever. It is not as famous as “ Les Choristes ” but it received the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and its touching and thought-provoking take on education and French society has been acclaimed by critics. At the beginning it was very difficult to put myself in the skin of the character but then I got into the clothes that he wears and it helped," he admits.Yet French director Laurent Cantet does something miraculous with it in this fresh piece of humanist, realist, optimist cinema, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year and was surely very unlucky not to get an Academy award. This is quite rarely used in French and sounds a bit old-fashioned, but François wants his students to be able to recognise the form and understand how the language works. Meirieu is concerned about the reading that can be made of the film, which, by showing the difficulties and the explosive situation that emerges, suggests that there is no alternative or which would reinforces authoritarianism and anti-pedagogism. Carl has been inspired by science experiments in his chemistry class, Khoumba has warmed to music and enjoyed learning Spanish, Esmerelda professes to have learned nothing in school but then admits that she has read Plato's Republic in her free time.