“Put some power back into this thing”: After My School Teacher, Emilie Therond returns to being a teacher.

Seven years after Mon maître d’école, director and journalist Emile Therond returns with the documentary Etre prof, which follows the journey of 3 teachers.

In Burkina Faso, Sandrine Zongo does not hesitate to leave her family to teach 600 km from home. Svetlana Vasileva travels to Eastern Siberia to teach Evenk children to read and write, and in Bangladesh young Taslima Akter travels on her school boat to the Sunamganj region so that children who have dropped out of school due to the monsoons flooding and blocking access can have access to education.

3 portraits of women who dedicate themselves completely to others in order to make a difference and leave a different future for their children.

A meeting with Emilie Therond, a passionate and charming director.

HelloCine: 7 years after “Mon maître d’école” you are making a documentary called “Being a teacher” which traces the lives of 3 teachers around the world. What made you want to pursue this topic?

Emily Therond : my school teacher was A film about a show that was very personal. that was taking place in France and I wanted to broaden the topic a bit, go deeper into the topic and continue to explore what teachers might have that was crucial in a child’s life.

Quite naturally, I wanted to know how things were going elsewhere, in more difficult countries, with fewer resources, with different traditions. JI wanted to know what obstacles the world’s teachers faced on their journey, how they overcame them, and above all, the impact they had on the children, these teachers from the end of the world…

Be a teacher It took me a long time to prepare, I worked with journalist Lucille Hochdoerfer, time Almost 6 months and then I went scouting in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Lebanon because I was looking for a teacher to teach Syrian refugees living in camps. It took almost a year to get the plot and characters.

The film takes us to Burkina Faso, Siberia and Bangladesh. How was filming in these sometimes hard-to-reach parts of the world?

Fortunately, well! JHe had one hell of a camera crew. team Relief is waiting! Director of photography Simon Vattel and sound engineer Michel Adamik are not only very good professionals, but also great travel companions.

We shot in extreme conditions: it was 40° in Burkina, -25° in Siberia. It was not easy for the technicians to work the generators in the cold without breaking the cables…

Filming was long and we lived with locals, very close to the teachers. It was difficult, but by filming these women up close, we knew how to live extraordinary moments.

The most difficult: Siberia

The most difficult shooting was in Siberia. It was beautiful, but physically challenging. First, the trip to the Evenki camp took 5 days: 2 planes, 2 trains, a truck and a snowmobile. Before the departure, the preparations with snowmobiles and sledges were long, because life in the forest in Siberia is dangerous. Without fire, without wood, death is very quick at this temperature.

We were led by Alexandra Lavrillier, an anthropologist, researcher and professor at the CNRS, who has been studying the lives of the Evenks for decades. Before that I could not meet with Svetlana, we talked via video conference.

When we got back to camp, we didn’t have much time to get to know each other and trust each other. Then we had to get used to the way of life and the temperatures… We slept in Evenki tents, in which the morning temperature dropped to -20 degrees.

Which teacher made the biggest impression on you?

I have a lot of admiration for Sandrin, Svetlana and Taslima, but I can still say that Taslima is the person who impressed me the most.

At first I met a frail, intelligent and shy young woman, and as the days passed I realized that she was a rock, unwavering in her faith and deeply loyal to the girls in her class.

He is the one who will change the mentality in his village. Gently, but without compromise. He manages to convince his parents to overcome prejudices and traditions. She tries to give them hope, to convince them of the possibilities of education and independence for young girls.

I knew that Taslima managed to convince her father and mother not to marry, and I knew that this happened regularly. I attended this conversation, which is systematically born: “BMaybe you should marry Taslima” but I didn’t know how he was going to argue in front of the camera.

When we filmed the series, I did not expect that he would confront his parents with such strong arguments: he wanted to beIBorn without his parents, he wanted to take care of them, return the money and prove to them that he is not inferior to a man!

“Changes will come from women”

If young women in Bangladesh begin to understand that they too can earn a living, choose a job, this is the beginning of a new freedom and education for girls. If young women understand that education can change their destiny, then they will teach their daughters differently.

Taslima’s fight for girls to stay in school and avoid early marriage echoes what is happening in the world today: in Iran, in Afghanistan, where within days another bomb exploded at one of the country’s last co-educational universities.

As women around the world fight for access to education and freedom, Taslima is fighting for herself and the young girls in her village in her own way.

The change will come from women, so obviously we have to support them, but it’s not by overcoming western ideas, imposing our thinking that it’s going to change, it has to come from them, from home. Taslima made the right choice, but she should be supported by the NGO that employs her, this film, UNESCO, international organizations.

The film shows the difficulty of accessing education in certain parts of the world and the dedication of these teacherseTo be able to educate children and offer them the possibility of a different future. Was that your intention from the prep work?

Yes, I wanted to show that when teachers are called to impart their knowledge to the body, they do wonders!

I wanted to capture the moment when the child’s gaze shines, the eyes are visible The spark, the brightness, where they suddenly understand, gain confidence, the beginning of autonomy, freedom, doors open.

“There’s love in the show, and that’s what makes it possible to move mountains.”

I wanted to show it, film it so that the audience, the kids, the families, the teachers, realize that it works, that it’s real, that it exists and we have to go on and get out…

Teachers know this very well: when they go beyond what they are supposed to do – which is already very similar to learning to read, write, count – that they go out of the frame, children react. There is love in the show and that is what makes it possible to move mountains.

Give this profession some power back

There is an interesting parallel to be drawn between these women who travel to KIloMbeings Getting an education in remote areas and hiring teachers in France is difficult. How do you explain this?

There is an employment problem in France. We’ve witnessed the start of a school year where 4,000 teachers have been lost, it’s huge and it’s not going to stop getting worse, but really it’s a global problem.

In order for primary and secondary education to be universal in 2030, 69 million additional teachers will be needed worldwide. This means that a very large number of children do not have access to education because there are no teachers.

Therefore, it is very important to restore some strength to this profession. I am not involved in politics, but I test this vocation and what it is able to change in the world, the importance of this profession, which is the cornerstone of building the women and men of tomorrow.

In a way, I am alerting to this essential and necessary need for the building of our children and the functioning of the world in general, so this is a cry from the heart, a cry of love.

In any case, it seems essential to me to act, to continue the struggle so that young people want to do this work, of course, if we get into the details, to increase salaries, to give them a sense of freedom while accompanying. Let them take the initiative…

I’m here to tell them: You’re doing miracles, we believe in you, we need you, so above all, don’t give up and keep bringing us this freedom.