Eleve Libre

A mediocre student, 16-year-old Jonas is largely uninterested in school preferring to focus on his tennis practice instead. But Jonas is forced to fame the music when he fails an important exam and the prospect of technical college looms frighteningly close. Enter Pierre, a 30-year-old worldly bachelor, who offers to take him under his wing. It doesn’t take long for the impressionable boy to fall for the suave bachelor, but the teacher-student relationship takes a more perverse turn, when Pierre decides to expand his protégé’s education into things not included in the curriculum. An absorbing and often unnerving account of the teacher-student dynamic, Private Lessons was featured in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes.

Director: Joachim Lafosse

Screenwriters: Joachim Lafosse, François Pirot

Cinematography: Hichame Alaouié

Editing: Sophie Vercruysse

Principal Cast: Jonas Bloquet, Jonathan Zaccaï, Yannick Renier, Claire Bodson