Photo: supplied
A German film called The Teachers' Lounge was slightly upstaged at the Oscars by a stronger-than-usual list of finalists for Best International Film.
But a year on it has proved well worth the wait, and appropriately it is a brilliant slow-burner of a movie.
It takes place at a primary school, where young, idealistic teacher Carla Nowak is in her first year.
She is upbeat, she loves the kids, and the kids seem to like her too - even her cheesy 'good morning' routine.
But there has been an outbreak of thefts at the school, and the senior teachers are determined to crack down on them.
They put pressure on some of the senior pupils to suggest possible culprits. Carla protests - but is assured it's "purely voluntary".
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, they say. And when Carla's class is interrupted and the students are told to open their wallets, again, purely voluntary, she feels very uncomfortable.
Suspicion escalates and pressure builds to get a confession.
Initially the attention is all on the children - particularly the ones who do not fit in, the trouble-makers, the outsiders. But there comes a time when suspicion turns to the teachers' lounge.
When Carla suspects someone is tampering with her property, she foolishly leaves a phone camera on, recording what is going on there.
Such filming is entirely illegal, but most of the teachers have a look anyway and before you know it, someone is in the frame. And once someone is actively suspected it is very difficult to un-suspect them.
It is an old game of hypotheticals - what if? The initial evidence casts suspicion on someone. But when some of it changes, then what? And what if someone made a mistake?
Meanwhile reactions change too. "My boy doesn't steal," says the father of one of the first kids to be accused. "If he did I'd break his legs," which is hardly the approach Carla is encouraging.
People are suspended on very flimsy grounds, and then the students get involved. On the basis of rumour, the school newspaper starts accusing teachers of a deliberate miscarriage of justice.
Sides are picked - in class as well as in the teachers' lounge - and shockingly, the person who becomes the scapegoat is poor Carla. Her efforts to help has meant she is suspected by all sides.
What started out, apparently, as a simple law and order situation - who is the thief, how do we bring them to justice? - has become something far less cut and dried.
When children - and adults - feel under threat, their first instinct is to lie or to steal potentially incriminating evidence.
The Teachers' Lounge is a wonderfully complex story of no easy answers to poorly devised questions. The final shot of an 11-year-old child being bodily carried out by several armed policemen shows how far an apparently simple situation can get out of hand.
Because by now the original offence has been all but forgotten.
The Teachers' Lounge, in other words, should be required viewing, I would say, for anyone inclined to throw the first stone in a dispute. And it is also a terrific film.
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