The two-hour-plus runtime... breezes past thanks to its sheer unrelenting energy.

| Aug 18, 2023

Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2008.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 5, 2020

The film leaps through the school year in sudden blinks, with the opportunity for Beagaudeau to reach these kids becoming as ungraspable as melting snow.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2020

Despite a noble desire to plumb the real racial, class, and generational politics of a contemporary classroom, The Class may strike some as unbearably prolonged, and at times, stagnant exercise.

| Jan 27, 2020

The Class is a riveting, authentic experience.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 3, 2019

There's something so inherently truthful and universal about what the film shows, and, if anything, its success is in its seeming lack of rhetoric and polemicising.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 27, 2019

There are lessons to be learned in The Class, but its makers aren't clear enough on what they are.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 11, 2018

This is not an 'inspirational teacher' movie, but it is a small, quiet inspiration.

| Aug 29, 2018

[Cantet] reminds all of us that kids are just kids, and every last one of them deserves a fair chance... The Class and its critical reception, proves the playing field certainly is changing.

| Aug 7, 2018

It is intensely vital.

| Dec 30, 2017

Cantet almost constantly packs his frame, drawing us closer to the immediacy and at-times claustrophobic nature of the classroom environment. That the film never leaves the school grounds only enhances its non-fiction sensibility.

| Dec 13, 2017

What most critics probably aren't telling you about in their expectedly lavish praises of the film is its stereotypical and downright patronizing portrayal of race and ethnicity.

| Oct 7, 2015

As you watch this exhilarating back-and-forth, it dawns on you that an ethically complex, emotionally troubling plot has taken shape; and you realize, with astonishment, that Cantet waited an hour to let it emerge.

| Nov 24, 2014

...the sort of film that one admires more than one enjoys...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 3, 2014

You will be sporadically moved by The Class, and maybe even inspired. You will also feel overpowering despair. But mostly: You will want to hug anyone who has ever, ever been a schoolteacher.

| Original Score: A | Jun 22, 2013

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Seems to question the continued effectiveness of an old teaching approach and its ability to adapt to new problems as well as modern variations of old ones.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 23, 2010

In the tidiest pitch-speak, it's the Dardennes do Degrassi, a convincingly intimate glimpse at the epic battle waged against apathy in schools the world over.

| Dec 17, 2009

The Class has considerable urgency and growing humor

| Aug 26, 2009

creates dramatic energy without a tightly delineated storyline

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 25, 2009