Jawad Rhalib, who has directed a dozen documentaries over the past twenty years, has signed up for a feature-length fiction film, Amal, un esprit libre, due in cinemas on April 17, 2024. Amal (stunning Lubna Azabal), a teacher at a Brussels high school, encourages her pupils to express themselves freely. With her bold teaching methods and enthusiasm, she turns their lives upside down, even to the point of shocking some of them.
The film opens with a discussion of Victor Hugo's novel Le dernier jour d'un condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man ), like a bad omen, and the anguish that accompanies it never leaves us for the rest of the film. Religion, and Islam in particular, soon enters the debate on the death penalty, which pits students from different backgrounds and faiths against each other in this 5th grade class.
The debates are fierce, and the slightest spark seems ready to set off a powder keg. Shot in a resolutely naturalistic manner (the handheld camera easily captures the nervousness and tension in the classroom), the film brilliantly verges on the documentary - hardly surprising, given its director's background. The students, most of whom are at the start of their acting careers, all play with great freedom of tone and naturalness, whether they're sitting in the front or back row of the classroom.
Amal tackles the ever-topical issues of online and school bullying, as a young girl accused of being gay is booed by all her classmates. But when it comes to secularism and pedagogical freedom, it's impossible not to think of Samuel Paty, whose ghost runs through every scene, giving us a gut-wrenching feeling that will never leave us.
During hectic pedagogical meetings, the teacher has to defend herself from any racism (she is, herself, Muslim) in the face of a parent whose son wasn't even present in class during a reading of a work by Abū Nuwās, a Muslim poet and openly homosexual, who poses a problem for them. A true beacon in the obscurantist night, she doesn't back down in the face of threats and refuses to bow to the wishes of these fanatical parents who detail a list of 'perverse' works to be banned from the syllabus.
It's a dialogue of the deaf in the face of parents who are weighing more and more heavily on education, a lack of listening and support on the part of the management, and above all a great sense ofinjustice in the face of this pedagogical and empathetic teacher who suggests that pupils who might be shocked "leave the room if they wish" so that this doesn't happen; music that's all too familiar.
Thesensitive subject is handled with greatsoul by the Belgian director, who avoids all the pitfalls by offering a plurality of thoughts from the belligerents, such as the Muslim father who supports his homosexual daughter, a real hint of hope. But he also shows that radicalization can come from within, without being distinguished by a particularly long beard, with the character played by Fabrizio Rongione, a particularly vicious professor of religion in a suit and tie.
In the face of stupidity, in the face of Salafism, in the face of the regression of free thought, Amal is a powerful film to show in classrooms and academies. A decision could well be taken at the start of the new school year: as of next September, religion classes, which were previously compulsory, could become optional in Belgian schools, in favor of philosophy and citizenship classes.
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