Jun

23 2016

24th Portland Jewish Film Festival: THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER

7:00PM - 9:00PM  

Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium 1219 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97205
503-221-1156 info@nwfilm.org
https://nwfilm.org/films/the-kindergarten-teacher/

Contact Nick Bruno
nick@nwfilm.org

$ Cost $ 9.00

Directed by Nadav Lapid
Israel/France, 2015, 119 mins.

In this ambitious tale about the human drive to create, Nadav Lapid subverts the traditional teacher-student relationship, warping it from selfless mentorship into self-absorbed obsession. Nira, a kindergarten teacher in Tel Aviv, is convinced that her five-year-old student is a modern day poetry prodigy. Hypnotized by the boy’s recitations of his work, she begins to write the poems down. A struggling poet herself, Nira comes to believe that only she can help the boy with his remarkable gift, but as her efforts escalate, so do the murky complexities surrounding her true motivations. “The Kindergarten Teacher—the film as well as the character—yearns for different values, for intensity, beauty, and meaning. Its sobering lesson is that the search for those things is most likely to end in madness, confusion, and violence.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times. (Hebrew with English Subtitles)