This French-Canadian drama and its elegant study of grief, guilt, and recovery goes places that few films dare go. And it does so with an economy of expression that avoids the histrionics and ...

From French-Canadian writer-director Philippe Falardeau, a filmmaker whose work is seldom seen outside of the Toronto International Film Festival, comes the Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar, a tender, ...

The Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar subtly examines the anguish of relocation in its portrait of an Algerian school teacher whose move to Canada is fraught at every turn, writes Stephen Farber. When ...

If you’re looking for an upset contender in your local Oscar pool (or HitFix’s Oscar pool where you can win $300 worth of movie tickets) you might look no further than best foreign language film. Out ...

The last of this year’s Oscar nominees for best foreign-language film to open in Seattle, this moving French-Canadian drama stars an Algerian comedian, Mohamed Saïd Fellag, in a dramatic role as a ...

Teachers seem much more appreciated in the movies than in real life, unfortunately. The film industry has a long tradition of presenting dedicated teachers reluctantly leaving their noble calling, ...

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. THE inspirational teacher is a cherished character in movies, by which I also mean overworked. Actors love them, because they are ...

Monsieur Lazhar (Music Box Films), the French-Canadian film that was a nominee for this year’s foreign-language Oscar, belongs to an uncommon tradition of movies about students and teachers. It’s not ...

Films about teachers and students are commonly inspirational melodramas about overcoming adversity inside and outside the classroom. The teacher is usually a newcomer to the school and initially ...

School can be cruel. It’s a message on display not only in the recent headline-grabbing documentary “Bully,” but also in the humble French-Canadian drama “Monsieur Lazhar.” Based on Evelyne de la ...

Movies about education are seldom convincing; their depiction of what goes on in the classroom hardly ever tallies with our own experiences of the bumps and leaps in the learning process or of the ...

Directed by Philippe Falardeau. Starring Mohamed Saïd Fellag, Sophie Nélisse, Émilien Néron, Danielle Proulx, Brigitte Poupart 12A cert, IFI/Screen, Dublin, 94 min IN A SNOWY Montreal schoolyard, ...