The Kindergarten Teacher

Nadav Lapid's 2014 Israeli film follows a teacher who notices that a five-year-old in her kindergarten produces poems. Nira, played by Sarit Larry, decides to protect the boy's gift. But the idea of protection turns quickly into possession, and from there into entering the child's life without permission. Lapid does not frame this as a story about talent. Nira herself attends an evening poetry class and knows that her own writing is going nowhere. What she sees in the child answers something missing in her life. The film watches that displacement with ruthless attention and does nothing to make Nira sympathetic. It screened in Critics' Week at Cannes. An American version directed by Sara Colangelo with Maggie Gyllenhaal followed in 2018; the two share a plot, but Lapid's is colder and more uncomfortable. Who it's for: viewers with tolerance for morally unresolved characters and an interest in Israeli cinema. Who it's not for: anyone who would find this kind of obsession, circling a small child, hard to sit through; the final section is deliberately unsettling.