Maria Speth's Mr. Bachmann and His Class is showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries starting February 20, 2022 in the series Viewfinder.
A film is like a journey.
In this case, it was a long and intense journey. A trip to a small town in the middle of the German province. Smoking industrial chimneys in the haze of the plain. The smell of hazelnut cream and metal in the air. Huge factory areas framed by long blocks of flats. A Turkish shopping street. A mosque. But also a Catholic church and some old half-timbered farms.
This film is a journey into Germany's past. In 1938, the Nazi regime built Europe's largest explosives production facility here, on the edge of a small farming village. 17,000 forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates were housed here in camps. The irony of history: the Nazi's policy of annihilating foreigners, non-Germans, led to a city whose population today has a migration share of 70%.
I arrived in a classroom that looks like a living room. With a large, self-made table. A bowl of fruit. Stacks of books. A sofa made of wooden boxes to rest on. With musical instruments scattered around the room, always at hand. Music is a constant companion as an exit from everyday pressures at school into a small realm of freedom, imagination, possibilities, into a lyrical space of experience, singing, speaking. With a familiar atmosphere, a home where you can express yourself and talk about everything. Fearlessly. With a teacher who doesn’t impose taboos or speaking and thinking bans. He demands that you represent your own opinion, but also that you your reasons for it. Like balls in a tennis match, the arguments are played back and forth between Mr. Bachmann and his class, but with no intention of determining any winners or losers. "Practicing democracy" would be the possible description for the kind of culture of conversation that Mr. Bachmann has fostered with his students.
A film is like love. My love for Stefi, who can take over the class like a whirlwind, who gives small concerts during the breaks, and sings Bulgarian songs for her classmates. Full of joie de vivre. My love for the sadness in Hasan's eyes. For the spontaneous expressions of happiness from Cengiz. In the middle of the lesson, he calls out to the class: "Mr. Bachmann, I love my class." Every single one of them is someone very special. And just as Mr. Bachmann gives these young people the opportunity to develop their skills, beauty and dignity in the classroom, I wanted to give them that in the montage: to be stars for 217 minutes.