Lesson Learned

Q&A with Bálint Szimler on April 10 & 11

Palkó has been transferred to a new school, and finding new friends and battling tough teachers are making his adolescent life all the more complicated. Meanwhile, Juci (Anna Mészöly) is a young teacher staring down the other end of the barrel at myopic superiors, bullying parents who can’t fathom why their child is struggling, and fellow teachers whose cruelty crosses boundaries. From these intersecting strands Bálint Szimler, in just his second feature, captures all the intricacy and pleasure of a campus novel—from the shame-tinged tedium of detention lessons to a dazzling school-play sequence. Photographed on deeply textured 16mm, Lesson Learned is refreshingly frank about how kids act amongst themselves, the way teachers wield power (emotional and physical) to mask their insecurities, and what happens when clueless parents are brought into the fold. It’s hard to imagine a viewer who won’t recognize much of their own schooling experience moment by moment, or find themselves moved by Szimler’s roundly empathetic worldview. Winner of a Best Performance prize and Special Mention in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente.