İlker Çatak: Social critical director with Oscar prospects

İlker Çatak already has a Student Academy Award under his belt - and now, nearly ten years later, the director, who grew up in Germany and Turkey, is in the running for the Best International Feature Film award for his social drama “The Teachers’ Lounge”. The film, about a conflict at school that spirals out of control, has already won multiple prizes, including the German Film Award. Now “The Teachers’ Lounge” is vying with four other films in the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars, the section in which the German anti-war film ”All Quiet on the Western Front” won the world’s most coveted film trophy in 2023.

“The Teachers’ Lounge” by İlker Çatak versus “Perfect Days” by Wim Wenders

Germany’s Oscar bid centres around a young teacher, played by the actress Leonie Benesch, who is keen to find out who is behind a series of thefts at her school and decides to make a covert video recording in the staff room. German Films, which represents German cinema abroad, initially selected the drama from among the other German submissions in August 2023. “By nominating ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’, the jury has chosen a highly topical, universal feature film that is impossible to resist,” stated German Films. “Ilker Çatak takes the microcosm of a school as the setting for social processes of erosion in the post-factual age.” 

His film also convinced the Academy in Los Angeles, which in January 2024 nominated “The Teachers’ Lounge”, alongside four other films, for an Oscar in the category Best International Feature Film. One of the rivals is the Japanese submission “Perfect Days” by German director Wim Wenders. The film tells the story of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo who appears content with his simple life.

To date, only four German productions have won the award for Best International Feature Film. Before “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 2023, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck landed the prize for his Stasi drama “The Lives of Others” in 2007. The same award went in 1980 to the film adaptation of Volker Schlöndorff’s novel “The Tin Drum” and in 2003 to “Nowhere in Africa” by Caroline Link.

Director Çatak also draws on autobiographical experiences in his film 

“The success of this film is also the success of a migrant story,” director Çatak told the portal “Zeit online” following the Oscar nomination. He explained that there are many autobiographical moments in the film: for example, he went to school in Istanbul together with his co-writer Johannes Duncker, and there’s a scene at the beginning of the film that they also experienced just as it is portrayed. Çatak, who was born in Berlin in 1984, graduated from school in Istanbul and then studied film and film direction in Berlin; later he did a master’s in film direction at Hamburg Media School.

Talking about the experiences of his co-writer Duncker in Istanbul and what he experienced himself in Berlin, Çatak said in the interview with “Zeit”: “We both experienced what it means to be in another country, or in a class at school, in a society in which you are different. In our film we tried to convey this sense of finding oneself.”

Oscar-winning short film “Sadakat” by İlker Çatak

Nearly ten years before his Oscar nomination for “The Teachers’ Lounge”, Çatak already won a Student Academy Award in 2015. His graduation film “Sadakat” (Fidelity) at Hamburg Media School tells the story of a young woman in Istanbul who spontaneously gives shelter to a political activist. The film won the Student Academy Award in gold in the category Best Foreign Film.