Directed by Bertrand Tavernier • 1999 • France
Starring Maria Pitarresi, Philippe Torreton, Nadia Kaci

Director Bertrand Tavernier brings a vivid social realism and rich humanism to this stirring study of one man fighting against the odds to make a difference. Daniel Lefebvre (Philippe Torreton) is a nursery school teacher in a depressed mining town in the north of France that has faced hard times ever since the mines closed. Witnessing the struggles of his poverty-stricken students and their parents and increasingly frustrated by an ineffectual bureaucratic system, Daniel boldly resolves to take matters into his own hands to improve his community.