Against gloomy international news and a winter that never ends, the Vendôme and Galeries cinemas are offering Brussels audiences a luminous Mexican film about the transformative power of education. A film by Christopher Zalla inspired by the story of Professor Sergio Juárez, which made the headlines in the Mexican media a decade ago.
In 2011, in Matamoros, a border town in northern Mexico, teacher Sergio Juárez is back at school. The José Urbina Lopez primary school is considered to be a tough one, with pupils' results judged to be mediocre if they bother to attend. But thanks to new teaching techniques, this teacher will have a profound impact on the lives of these pupils. He gave them the desire to go back to school and enabled one of them, Paloma, to be considered "The New Steve Jobs" on the cover of Wired magazine. The story moved the entire country. Paloma Noyola was a little girl who lived on a garbage dump and dreamed of becoming an aerospace engineer, observing the stars amidst mountains of rubbish. That year, Paloma obtained the highest national mark in mathematics.
Okay, the script doesn't shine for its originality. The figure of the inspirational teacher has been seen over and over again in the history of cinema. Was the outcome of the film known from the start? Absolutely. But it works. You get carried away for two hours in this feel-good fable about the power of education.
The professor, brilliantly played by the comedian Eugenio Derbez, takes us from laughter to tears in the space of a few seconds. "It was supposed to be a small film, a film for festivals, and suddenly it took on another dimension", confesses the lead actor, who we had already enjoyed in CODA. So it's the story of a small film. Which won the Favorite Award at Sundance and took off.
The film has found an audience in both Mexico and the United States, and that's hardly surprising given the luminous and inspiring nature of Professor Juarez's story. He gives children the tools they need to learn and to want to learn for themselves. To give them the confidence to believe in their dreams, to discover their potential. We follow several of these kids in their lives, their complex personal trajectories outside school. Paths crossed by poverty, corruption, violence and drugs, where the classroom becomes a refuge.
The story also touches us with its universality. "What was his name?" said the school principal asking Juarez about the teacher who changed his life. It's a sentiment we can all relate to, that of the power of education as a means of transforming society.
However, the film has the merit of never falling into a simplistic meritocratic discourse. Professor Juarez's idealism is counterbalanced by the violence that surrounds the school and the pragmatism of the other adults. Not everything can be solved by doing the best you can, by trying. While the story is based on true events from a decade ago, little has changed in the town of Matamoros, which was still making headlines recently for cartel-related disappearances. And the small Urbinez primary school still doesn't have a computer room.
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