The result is a lovely, upbeat, even life-affirming film. It's a work which certainly doesn't soft-pedal the less appealing sides of children's behavior, but shows that empathy, given appropriate circumstances and resources, can be taught just as effectively as arithmetic and spelling.
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Screen DailyFionnuala Halligan
Screen DailyFionnuala Halligan
The Latasters rarely put a foot wrong - from their static opening shot in the town of Hapert to the final frames of Miss Kiet in her classroom, this is a beautifully-judged piece.
Much like a day at elementary school, this vérité wonder called Miss Kiet’s Children is exhausting, heartening, raucous, tender, occasionally dull, sometimes tearful, and ultimately a vital public good.
As in Nicolas Philibert’s similar French documentary “To Be and to Have” (2002), the relative absence of conflict in the interactions between a seasoned teacher and wonderful pupils grows tedious at feature length, and there is — presumably by design — relatively little meat on this documentary’s bones.