Anticipation.
Filmmaker Ruth Beckermann is quietly amassing a seriously great body of work.
Enjoyment.
A moving exploration into the artistic potential of children.
In Retrospect.
The film’s lowkey subject matter belies a thematic richness and depth.
The first words in Ruth Beckermann’s Favoriten, a documentary about a Viennese primary school class, are spoken not by any of the film’s subjects, but by its 72-year-old director. In voiceover, against a colorful backdrop of children’s drawings, Beckermann reads the names of the 25 students and one teacher she spent nearly three years filming from fall 2020 to spring 2023. Among other things, this quasi-roll call is the first hint that the movie, despite being billed as a film by Ruth Beckermann, was made in full collaboration with the people we’ll see on screen – and further, that it will make no attempt to disguise the presence or perspective of the filmmaker.
Shot at the Volksschule Bernhardtstalgasse, Vienna’s largest elementary school, the film follows the class from second to fourth grade, during which time the students, largely children of Middle Eastern and North African migrants, learn a number of life lessons. Ilkay Idiskut, their thirty-something Turkish teacher, likewise undergoes life-altering changes while also dealing with the day-to-day issues plaguing the contemporary public education system, namely a shortage of teachers and a lack of resources to fill extracurricular positions.
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While these matters dictate how the school operates, they’re rarely explicated – only once in a faculty meeting and brief moments when Ilkay converses with a parent or a colleague are they ever broached. Otherwise, the film focuses entirely on the relationship between Ilkay and her students, whose personalities shine through in sequences of youthful camaraderie and occasional fits of unruly adolescence.
As recent school-set movies such as Un Film Dramatique (2019) and Mr Bachmann and His Class (2021) have demonstrated, classrooms can act as near-perfect microcosms of society at large. Here, students are given crash courses in everything from religious diversity to gender politics. In an early scene, a male student touches the rear-end of a female classmate; Ilkay reprimands the boy, but it’s the girl’s response that breaks down the problem most succinctly: “Not all girls like that.” Later, the class takes a pair of trips to the city, where they excitedly visit a Mosque and a Catholic Church. In these moments, which speak to a sense of innocence and shared humanity, it’s difficult not to think about the absence of such acceptance in the adult world.
Where Favoriten differentiates itself from the aforementioned films is in its combination of formal and emotional complexity. At various points, Beckermann literally gives the movie over to the students, who film themselves and each other with a cellphone, lending a first-person intimacy to what could otherwise be a straightforward example of vérité cinema.
Instead, the viewer is given access to the children’s individual interests and curiosities. Some kids perfectly compose their shots; others take a more freeform approach. One student interviews Ilkay, who speaks about her siblings and husband. As fourth grade begins, Ilkay reveals that she’s pregnant and won’t be able to finish out the year. Her announcement, and the kids’ reaction to it, is as quietly moving as any fiction.
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