The Lesson

About the film and the director

A new teacher, Zane, tries to befriend the new high-school class she is mentoring, but she goes too far -- at Zane's parties and on her field trips, the border between the teacher and the students begins to blur and dissolve. When one of her students falls in love with her, Zane finds herself in a tangled web of personal conflicts. The film had its premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival (August, 2014) as a part of the First Films World Competition, followed by screenings at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Moscow International Film Festival, the Bergen International Film Festival and others. The Lesson was the most successful release in Latvia in 2014 with almost 100,000 people watching it in the cinemas and on TV. The director Andris Gauja was born in 1978 in Talsi, Latvia. He studied screenwriting in Riga, worked as a TV journalist and producer and started making documentary films in 2005, among which the most significant work is Family Instinct (2010) which was awarded the Best World Feature at Silverdocs (2011, USA), got nominated for the Best Mid Length Documentary at the IDFA (2010, Netherlands), and was selected for more than 25 other international film festivals around the world. In Latvian with English language subtitles, 108 minutes. For more information please visit www.facebook.com/thelessonmovie.