Director Laurent Cantet Winning the Palm d'Or at Cannes Courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival

Laurent Cantet's The Class (Entre les murs) portrays the daily grind of a junior high school teacher in a tough Parisian neighborhood.

Interviewed just after his film's official screening at Cannes, Cantet did not expect he would be crowned with a Palme d'Or just one day later. An interview with the first Palmed Frenchman in the 21 years since Maurice Pialat won for Under Satan's Sun.

A 5 minute ovation, an audience that alternated between laughter and lumps in the throat, people visibly moved upon exiting the theater.... did you expect such a reaction from the Cannes public?
No. And to sum it all up, I'm on cloud nine. The emotion is so strong... I never thought that people would react like this; that there would be such a connection... it's astounding. And you can't imagine what it means for me to be in Cannes and to have my film screening in this theater, so replete with history, through which so many of the directors that I admire have passed.

Where did you get the idea for the film?
I've wanted to do a film about school for a long time, a film that would spotlight the classroom and use everyday moments to show what students are experiencing in it. The day my last film, Heading South (Vers le sud) came out, I was on a radio show with François Bégaudeau who had just released his latest book. During the show, I discovered his text and realized that it tackled all of the themes I wanted to address in exactly the way I wanted to address them — with a very minimalist and descriptive approach focused on a junior high classroom.

And...
As we entered the elevator, I asked him if he would be interested in an adaptation. He gave me his book and three days later I signed on.

Why a school?
Because I feel that it's in schools where all of our major societal challenges are played out: immigration, respect, violence, integration... it's a fascinating microcosm.

This is a film about school, but also about language.
Yes, but I'd say it's more about languages — how you can shift in different linguistic registers and how you can also be victim of language.

It's reminiscent of Games of Love and Chance (L'esquive) by Abdellatif Kechiche.
In some ways, but Kechiche is more into teen language. I enjoy teen language and teen rhetoric, but in Kechiche's films it's the big talker that comes out ahead; the shy and introverted main character of Games of Love and Chance loses in the end. In my film, by contrast, all of the kids are hampered by their shortcomings, but even if they are talkative, they still often find themselves losing.

In some way, The Class is the best answer to the controversy that has shaken up the Croisette and criticized French films for being narcissistic.
We had a feeling that this film would do well. The Class sold very quickly at the film market. I'm still convinced that it's only by examining something personal that one can uncover the universal. The film doesn't refer to schooling in general, but to a specific class, a specific teacher... the trick was getting these characters to transmit a larger message.