Mr Bachmann and His Class review – a soul-stirring epic of everyday education | Film
Maria Speth’s 217-minute deep-dive documentary won the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin film festival; it shows us the life of a German teacher, Dieter Bachmann, and his lively class of 12- and 13-year-olds at a school in Stadtallendorf near Marburg. It is a place that has a footnote in European history for using forced labour to produce munitions during the second world war, with trees planted on the factory roof as camouflage – grisly facts that we see the children learning.Herr Bachmann presides over a diverse mix of…