Philippe Falardeau, Director of ‘Monsieur Lazhar’

After the suicide of a teacher in a Montreal middle-school, a class of grieving students is thrown together with an Algerian immigrant with tragic secrets of his own and who becomes their new teacher. The film, “Monsieur Lazhar,” directed by Philippe Falardeau and adapted from a play, tells a story of cultural gaps and emotional chasms in one small classroom and out into the wider world.