CPH:DOX 2025: Elementary Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Copenhagen International Documentary Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

French director Claire Simon has been a mainstay when it comes to observational documentaries. Similar to the grand master Frederick Wiseman, she tackles the role of French public institutions and how they interact with the population. Her 2023 film, Our Body (Notre Corps), dove into the work of a female health institution providing care for pubescent girls and pregnant women, gender-affirming care, and cancer therapies. Only one year following its release, Simon returned to this past year’s Cannes Film Festival with her latest, Elementary (Apprendere or Learn). Here, she immerses her cameras in a public school in the peripheries of Makarenko Public Elementary School in Ivry-sur-Seine, a southeastern suburb of Paris. The school educates hundreds of students and hosts different classes with their own intricacies.

Structure-wise, Elementary takes place over the course of a school year but is not obliged to a specific storyline. Simon’s approach attempts to understand how the teachers and the school’s board deal with each child’s necessities, shifting from one class to another. There is no organization or approach in handling the different classes. Simon is in the first grade and then follows the sixth, before returning to the fourth one. Rather than following a linear story, the director, who also operates the camera, looks for elements that differentiate Marakenko from other schools. In the end, it is not the pedagogical method or the infrastructure but the pupil’s body that goes into the educational space.

Simon, armed with her cinema verité style and an upper realistic extract of life, allows her to study the relationship between the students and their teachers. In today’s society, screens and hyper-stimulus have become increasingly prevalent in children’s’ lives, making it that much more difficult for teachers. The result highlights how the frenetic pace of modernity can be felt through children who lack patience and understanding. Simon sensibly captures how educators attempt to teach them how to wait for their time and how life does not deliver what one desires when they desire it. The rawness of this stylistic choice allows audiences to comprehend the difficulty of educating a group of children. Yet, the film also presents their sweetness and naivety through their innocent questions and creative output.

The observational technique employed by the film, even though it presents a series of possibilities for framing real life aspects, it can also become dire and repetitive. This is the case here, especially when Simon fails to choose the most engaging classroom. At times, it could simply be children who can’t stop yelling and give their teachers a hard time, which admittedly is not the most fascinating thing about it. To that effect, one can’t help but feel like the film is merely sticking to a formula, which has historically been the case for most documentaries of this subgenre. Even so, Simon thrives in moments of freedom through even the littlest of interactions, including a scooter break of an autistic child who does his exercises and needs to take time off so as not to be overwhelmed. The result is a brief but fascinating element that flees the recipe.

At the end of the day, Elementary empathically observes teachers and students of a suburban public elementary school in Paris. While it captures moments of genuine connection between the children and teachers, emphasizing their importance in human development.

still courtesy of CPH:DOX

If you liked this, please read our other reviews here and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Instagram or like us on Facebook.

Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.