A tense, claustrophobic thriller playing out in the halls of a German secondary school, The Teacher's Lounge is the anti-Dead Poet's Society. When one of her students is accused of stealing from his fellow classmates, idealistic new teacher Carla (Leonie Benesch, The White Ribbon) decides to investigate the matter herself. What should have been a simple plan ending in a teachable moment quickly spirals out of control after another faculty member is implicated, and Carla finds herself in deep over her head as her attempts to do "the right thing" grow more desperate. Angry parents, mutinous students, duplicitous colleagues— teachers aren't paid enough for this.

In developing The Teachers' Lounge director İlker Çatak drew on his own early outsider experiences, where he was made keenly aware that his status as the child of Turkish immigrants singled him out even in ostensibly tolerant and progressive Berlin, to draw out the sense of knife-edge paranoia that pervades contemporary surveillance culture in Germany. Shot through with pitch-dark humour, the tension between doing what is right and being perceived to be correct forms the core of this modern parable about the drive for moral purity, like a Michael Haneke-directed episode of Bluey.