La cour

A school playground can become a battlefield. Anya, who is attending a state school for the first time after spending many years abroad, doesn’t want to accept that the boys occupy and dominate almost the entire playground to play football. In order to change this, she forges a plan with her allies, yet the fronts between the children become ever more entrenched and the battles for dominance get progressively out of hand. The headteacher (Clotilde Courau) even has to intervene at a parents’ evening to calm things down, the teachers always arrive late, and one of the minders won’t stop talking about Serena Wlliams. On a school trip, the escalation finally arrives. Between comedy and seriousness, at once allegorical and realistic, this TV film by Hafsia Herzi depicts the microcosm of school as a social field riven with conflict where everything is determined by group pressure. One pleasing extra is the appearance of French singer-songwriter Laura Cahen as a music teacher. (bik)