The Class, set in a tough, ethnically diverse comprehensive school on the edge of Paris, follows a group of students and their teacher, whose interactions with one another are sometimes amicable and, at other times, combative. The Class is neither a documentary nor is it, strictly speaking, a docudrama. It is a drama which blurs the line between fiction and reality. Cantet achieved the film’s true-to-life feel by using real kids and their teachers from Francoise Dolto Junior High in Paris’s 20th arrondissement instead of actors – in much the same tradition as Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers; Ken Loach’s Poor Cow and Kes; and more recently Saul Dibb’s Bullet Boy. These directors were successful in “engineering” an understated simplicity in their works, as well as creating a heightened sense of realism, achieved by using non-actors to play the main roles, and diverging from a written script. In an interview Cantet revealed no dialogue was written, although a framework story for the students was provided. He also held weekly improv sessions for eight months with the actors, including Francois Begaudeau (who plays the teacher, and also authored the novel and co-authored the screenplay). This process created a sense of spontaneity in each of the scenes. The Class was made with the relatively low budget of 2.3 million euros: It was shot using three high definition cameras (one pointed at the teacher, another on the student at the centre of the scene, and a third camera poised to capture moments of digression).
