THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
In Grenoble, at the Guynemer Vocational High School, there has been a class 3 since 2012And unique in France, which every year offers about 15 teenagers who are seriously dropping out of school the opportunity to link them to a professional qualification project, obtaining a CAP or even a vocational baccalaureate. Dubbed “Starter”, this system was conceived and coordinated by Antoine Gentil who, to say the least, surrounded by a handful of associate teachers, pays his person to raise these troubled youngsters. Agnès and Xabi Molia, she a documentary director, he a director and novelist, settled in the classroom and followed, for a year, the path set in place to do so. It should be noted that the duo of directors, brother and sister from the city, had already done some scouting activities during the two school years preceding the shoot.
This long immersion – returned by the choice of the “Scope” and the shooting sequence – allows the film to take a closer look at the efficiency and, because we save words, the resounding success of the project. It consists of a balanced mix of active partnership with companies and intensive support for students, both psychological and educational. It is the minimum, you will think, except that the film, it is its great value, it highlights what it takes determination, stubbornness, patience and benevolence to achieve this minimum. This immediately means that the real hero of this film – in line with the master Georges Lopez in the famous To be and to Have (2002) by Nicolas Philibert – is Antoine Gentil, whose energy, omnipresence, combativeness, listening quality, pedagogical need and intelligence finally magnetize the environment.
Positive energy
Dependent to a large extent on this preponderance, the staging must in any case distribute the other roles or, better said, since it is also a documentary, capture what the filmed subjects want to give it. These are, of course, the parents, regularly called upon by the teaching staff to strengthen their support strategy, and therefore present in the film. These are, even more, some “characters” (Tamara, Nels, Ziyad) who are formed rapidly within the group of students, whose vicissitudes and evolution, whims and depressions, hopes and joys also structure the story, under the sign of complete uncertainty about what they will do with themselves at the end of the year, and therefore with the film.
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