Classmates

An English teacher terrified of students, yet convinced of the fundamental educational value of school, is assigned to a difficult high school, in the Rebibbia area. Her colleagues have given up hope of getting anything out of the last class, the one filled with the most difficult and reluctant students, a hodgepodge of an urban melting pot. Between smoking and broken families, drug dealing and first loves, stories of sex and resignation, the kids throw themselves away day after day, between joints, cell phones, and preconceptions, convinced that life outside of school is simply hostile and out of bounds to them. The teacher, or rather “Pressoré,” as everyone calls her, has three options: run away like her predecessors, ignore it, or enter, unarmed, into that lions’ cage.