Condemnation comes much easier in THE TEACHER where a seemingly passionate and kind teacher uses her pupils to manipulate their parents for her own personal benefit, whether for material gain or even the promise of a romantic affair. Concerned about the school performance of their beloved children, most parents succumb to the pressure and provide the teacher with various services and gifts.

Three families, however, decide to take a stand and try to remedy the situation together with the school head teacher at a clandestine parent meeting.

Although set in the early 1980s, THE TEACHER tells a universal story that could happen any time and anywhere… at least as long as corruption, pettiness, and selfishness still rule the world.

“All adults and most children have experienced the feeling where something that might benefit you now might also be the wrong thing to do. Or the other way around: that following your conscience or moral code may be difficult or very disadvantageous. That’s why this story is understandable to everyone,” says director Jan Hřebejk.

Zuzana Mauréry as the teacher presents as sugar and spice with a subcutaneous steel core, considering her students as servants and slaves, assigning as her housework as their homework. Instead of vocabulary and valency she assigns vacuuming. Good grades are given for grovelling, failure to comply converts to poor marks.

The abuse of power is symbiotic of child abuse, and such abuse thrives and proliferates in an environment of fear and opportunism. The TEACHER teaches us to stand our ground for human dignity and steadfastly disabuse the abuser.