It All Starts Today

Daniel runs a nursery school in a mining town in the north of France. The pits have closed, unemployment has settled in, and for many children the school is the only ordered place. One day a mother does not come to collect her children and collapses at the gate. From then on Daniel stops being a teacher and has to deal with social services, the town hall, the families and his own administrators. Bertrand Tavernier directs. The screenplay is by Tavernier, his daughter Tiffany Tavernier and Dominique Sampiero, who taught for many years and on whose experience the text rests. Philippe Torreton plays Daniel. The method is realism. Most of the children are not professionals and the classroom scenes were shot in a real nursery; the line between acting and documentary is deliberately blurred. The subject is not poverty but bureaucracy. Who is supposed to do what is unclear, the institutions refer each other, and the head teacher is caught between them every time; that is where the film directs its anger. Daniel is not a faultless hero; he is impatient, angry, and neglects his own relationship. It screened at the 1999 Berlin film festival and was read in France inside the argument about education. Who it is for: viewers who like French social realism and films built on education. Who it is not for: the narrative is episodic, there is no resolution, and the situation worsens throughout.