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The Class

2008

Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.

The Cabin in the Cotton

1932

Sharecropper's son Marvin tries to help his community overcome poverty and ignorance.

Yefon

2015

An illiterate village girl defies the customs of her tribe, discriminatory to women, only to become the spark of a Literary Revolution.

Alma Mater

2023

The First Grader

2010

The true story of an 84 year-old Kenyan villager and ex Mau Mau freedom fighter who fights for his right to go to school for the first time to get the education he could never afford.

The Mighty Pawns

1987

Inner city kids are given new direction when they are convinced to join the school chess team.

Homeless Children

1964

Lam Siu-ming cannot afford tuition and quitted school. His teacher Ms. Chui intercedes with the principal in vain. She quits. Chui became an orphanage director. She suffers from the orphans’ mischief, but she treats them with love and honesty instead of punishing them. She gets recognition from kids and colleagues. Siu-ming is expelled. He dares not go home and lives on pickpocketing with street boys. Chui learns that Siu-ming is missing and looks for him. Siu-ming feels ashamed and avoids her. Chui finds Siu-ming and takes him and the street boys to the orphanage, yet they cannot be disciplined and escape. Little Bully runs after them, but is beaten down on the railway. Siu-ming's legs are cut off by the train when he tries to save Little Bully. The escaped kids regret for this. Chui's cousin wants her to go abroad together, but at the farewell party, he is moved by the orphans, so he does not force the plan, and decides to stay behind to serve the kids.

Stanley & Iris

1990

An illiterate cook at a company cafeteria tries for the attention of a newly widowed woman. As they get to know one another, she discovers his inability to read. When he is fired, she takes on trying to teach him to read in her kitchen each night.