The Big Picture

The road to Oscars for ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ was rocky, with struggles and self-doubt along the way.
The film focuses on a teacher dealing with mistrust and accusations from faculty, parents, and students.
Director Ilker Çatak shares insights on the film’s journey, challenges of directing kids, and future project ‘Yellow Letters.’

As part of Collider’s FYC screening collaboration with Landmark Theatres, we got to spend an evening with German filmmaker Ilker Çatak to discuss his fifth feature, The Teachers’ Lounge, now nominated for Best International Feature Film. The road to the Oscars wasn’t an easy one, though. In fact, the co-writer and director tells Q&A host Steve Weintraub that he believed this could be his last film, citing his own vulnerabilities and self-assumed “mediocrity.”

In The Teachers’ Lounge, Leonie Benisch plays Carla Nowak, a dedicated first-time school teacher who displays a unique idealism among her peers and cultivates an easy rapport with her students. Ms. Nowak’s relaxed approach to her job is upended when a series of thefts are pinned on one of her students (Leonard Stettnisch), leading to mistrust and accusations from faculty, parents, and students alike. This manhunt prompts Ms. Nowak to take matters into her own hands, but her investigation goes sideways and causes even more contention.

Check out the video above or the transcript below for the full Q&A where Çatak shares the film’s journey from the Berlin International Film Festival to becoming a contender for the 2024 Academy Awards and standing alongside cinema idols like Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan. He talks about the choice to keep Carla Nowak’s private life private, the challenges faced when directing a cast of children, and how the editing process transformed the film. He also addresses theories and comments from Letterboxd and shares details on his next project, Yellow Letters.

The Teachers’ Lounge is in the running for Best International Feature Film this year against Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano (Italy), Wim Wender’s Perfect Days (Japan), J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow (Spain), and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (UK).

The Teachers’ Lounge When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.Release Date May 4, 2023 Director Ilker Çatak Cast Leonie Benesch , Leonard Stettnisch , Eva Löbau , Michael Klammer Runtime 98 minutes Main Genre Drama Writers Johannes Duncker , Ilker Çatak

The Road to the Oscars Was Paved With Rejection for ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’
Image via Sony Pictures Classics

COLLIDER: What is this journey been like for you, because you really never know when you’re making a film what the reaction is gonna be? When did you realize that there was a strong reaction to this movie?

ILKER ÇATAK: That’s a good question, actually, because I made this film thinking this is gonna be my last film. Really, I was thinking, “I’m such a mediocre artist. I don’t have anything to say.” There were so many self-doubts. We wrote the script and gave it to people, to possible partners, and all of them said, “We don’t believe in this.” So we got turned down a lot. I mean, you’re struggling and you assume your own mediocrity. You’re dealing with that, and on top, all these people tell you that the stuff you wrote is nonsense. We were told that this is not cinema, we were told that this is television, and that’s a maybe. So, I really had to fight for the idea. I thought to myself, “Well, I’m just gonna make this film the way I want it, and if I never get to make another film, that’s okay.” Like, “If it’s a bomb, it’s a bomb. I don’t care.”

Then the film was finished and we gave it to people, to possible world sales. I don’t know if you know the film business, but in the film business a film needs to have a world sale that takes the film to the important festivals and sells it to territories. So we gave it to the world sales. That was in 2022, the film was just finished, and all of them turned it down. All of them were like, “We like the film but it’s too local. We don’t see international potential.” And I was sure that, “Okay, this is nonsense. Of course, in the meantime, you show it to your friends and your family, and every everyone’s like, “Great,” and you’re like, “Yeah, thank you. Thank you.” Like, “They don’t wanna be rude.” But then something happened; the Berlin Film Festival, like the curators of the Berlin Film Festival, saw the film and they invited the film to the festival, not saying what section. They were like, “We are considering this for a competition but we don’t know yet. We need to see a couple of other films.” So they made us wait.

We waited almost half a year, and then in December — Berlin starts in February, it’s about to start tomorrow, I think — they told us it’s not the competition, it’s just Panorama. And we were like, “Oh, man.” So we went into the Festival Panorama. That’s the section, which is not the main section, but where other films go. It’s still a good section, though. I mean, it’s the Berlin Film Festival, but I wanted to have to be in that competition. Anyway, so we’re having our premiere, and at the same time, the same day you have these screenings for buyers. Buyers are the ones for the territory. And in the meantime, we went with a little company from Belgium called Be For Films with a sales agent, Pamela Leu. I’ve never heard of her before but she saw the film, and she said, “I’m gonna do it.” I said, “Alright.” Then she called us and she said, “I just sold the film to 10 territories.” And we thought, “Is she kidding? This is a bad joke.” She said, “No, and every other territory wants the film. Sony Pictures Classics is interested.” I don’t know if you’ve seen the logo, but Sony Pictures Classics have the most distinguished films. They have filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar or Michael Haneke, and all of a sudden it was like, “Wow, what’s going on?” Then we won two awards in Berlin. The film went on to win five German film awards against All Quiet on the Western Front. And to this day, it’s a surprise to me. I don’t know how all that happened.

What did it mean to you when you found out you were gonna be the German selection for the Academy Awards?

ÇATAK: I mean, you’ve seen the film. It’s a small, tiny film, and there are all these other films that have bigger budgets. When we got selected, I mean, I was like, “Guys, Wim Wenders — we’re in the same round.” Then he got selected from Japan, but still, there are these masters — Christian Petzold, German cinema, and they picked our film. And of course, it’s still, to this day, like a fairy tale. Now, I have a new problem. [Laughs] I’m like, “Am I ever gonna make another film that is…?” So it goes on and on.

You’re very confident.

ÇATAK: I’m never confident. That’s the problem, really. The insecurity is a part of this job, I think. There are directors that are very confident, but I always question my work. Even when I’m on set, I’m like, “How can I do this better?” All the time, I’m like, “Is this good enough?” And sometimes it gets to me. Sometimes it eats me up, and then I need someone, and most of the time that’s my producer, saying, “You know what? Your insecurities are actually good. Embrace them.”

I agree with that. So what is it like being in Hollywood with this? I’m assuming you went to the Academy luncheon. I’m assuming you were meeting idols of cinema, so what has this process been like?

ÇATAK: I mean, yesterday I was at this nominee’s luncheon and you get on stage and take this group photo, this class of ‘24 kind of photo, and on that stage there are guys like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig, and I’m standing there thinking, “Somebody needs to pinch me.” And on the other hand, people are like, “You’ve been here before,” because we won a Student Academy Award with a short film a couple of years ago. But still, I always thought that you have to have big budgets or be incredibly, you know, to do these big films, to be there, to be able to be there. But I was standing there and I was thinking, “What I really love about America and about LA is how they worship this industry, how they worship their own culture of filmmaking.” I felt like, “This is a family and everybody is celebrating the sacred thing called cinema,” and that’s really something that we don’t have in Germany or in Turkey.

Image via The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Now that everyone has seen the film, what do you think would surprise people to learn about the making of your movie?

ÇATAK: That it’s actually easier to work with kids than one might assume, as long as you pick the right kids. [Laughs] I’m gonna tell you a story. So Leonie, the main actor, I wanted to work with her, and I brought the screenplay to her and she read it, and we met in Berlin, and the first thing that she said to me was, “I like the screenplay, and I’m gonna do it, but you have to know, I do not like children.” And I said, “Why?” And she said, “I have three little brothers. I know children can be sweet but they can be little shits, as well, so I know what kids can be like.” And I said, “Okay, don’t worry. I’ll take care of the kids.”

So I went into the casting process of those kids, and I would gather kids in different groups and have them improvise with me. In those improvisational sessions, I would see what kid is actually on and what kid is smart, and what kid you can work with. Then I would gather them again in the presence of cameras to see how natural they are. In the third round, I would have personal interviews with them, and in those interviews I would basically tell them three things, one of them being, “Listen, I’m not your boss, we’re colleagues, and I expect you to have work ethics. I want you to know what’s going on in the scene, I want you to prepare, I want you to go to sleep early. Second thing, we’re a family, we take care of each other. We’re brothers and sisters. If somebody doesn’t feel well, everybody goes and shows their support. And the third thing would be, everybody earns the same. There are no VIPs.” And I told this to the production, as well. So it was basically communism, everyone earning the same. I made sure that the kids don’t have this. “Oh, I’m an extra…” So we went into the film with that mindset.

And of course, when you work with kids, it’s not always easy. They are kids, ultimately, right? And sometimes they would go, like, “Ilker, what are we having for lunch? How much longer do we need to go?” And one day I got kind of, not mad at them, but I was like, “Guys, here’s the truth of the matter: we’re all gonna die, but this film, it will be around, and your kids and grandkids will see it, so you better make sure to get this right right now.” They got the idea.

An American director does not say that. [Laughs]

ÇATAK: Yeah, I know, but I tried to be their friend and be aware of their vulnerabilities and of what they can take, but at the same time not treat them as kids. What I said to them was, “We’re colleagues,” and I meant that. If they mean it, I don’t want to be asked, “How much longer do we need to go? What do we have for lunch?” And so, I told them, “What we’re doing here is we’re putting ourselves to the service of a higher thing, of art. It’s not about you or me, or the star. It’s about the common thing. This is the sacred thing right here, right now. Not the red carpet, not the gala, not the premiere, right? Here, the process of itself.”

You only have five hours, I believe, to work with those kids in Germany where you were filming. How did you make that work because of the limited hours?

ÇATAK: So, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this kind of feeling when you’re tired and you will actually wanna lay down, but then you go on a walk or on a run and you just feel better again. I dealt with the same way with the time pressure. I thought, “If I rush now, they will feel it. They will feel the pressure.” And that’s why I thought, “I need to take off pressure.” So I would start the day with a conversation every day, and I would just take my time, ask them about life, ask them about what they dream of, what their fears are, what’s your relationship to your parents? How hard is it for you to apologize? Why is it hard for you to apologize? And stuff like that. I would tell them about my own world, about my own relationship to my mom, how she can get me mad, and we would just have a genuinely interesting conversation with each other.

They would crack me up because they would say things like, “Oh, today you buttoned up and that probably means we’re gonna do something severe or something like that.” They see every part of you. In our research, what one of the teachers told us, she was like, “I have to be aware of how I dress because they see everything.” So I got up in the mornings and I would get in front of the mirror. Usually when I go to set I just wear anything, but I would actually think about what they will think when I stand in front of them.

Image via Sony Pictures Classics

You obviously researched teachers and schools before you started writing and made the film. Was there anything that you learned that really surprised you or anything that you were like, “This has to be in the movie?”

ÇATAK: What had to be in the movie, if you’ve noticed, is that two things always happen at the same time. So when Carla is talking to her colleagues, she’s also doing a Skype interview. When she’s talking to the secretary, the post guy comes into the scene. When she’s talking on the phone in the end to the mother of Oscar, two kids come out and ask if they can go to the toilet. So this kind of constant pressure of doing things simultaneously was something that we saw when we did the research. When I sat down in schools, I was just really impressed by what these people have to deliver and how much pressure they have to endure with the stuff that they’re doing anyways — the stuff that they need to prepare, the whole politics of school, the parents, of course, the kids, of course. It was just crazy how much multitasking they have to deliver, and we tried to put that in the film.

I mean, there were really certain things that we saw in the research that just made it their way into the film, things like the clapping, for instance. I saw that with one teacher; she was doing this clapping game, and then I talked to the kids about it and one of the kids said to me, without the teacher hearing it, she said, “It’s actually pretty embarrassing.” And so that scene came along. Or for instance, I asked the secretary, “Tell me about an intimate moment with the students,” and then she said, “Well, sometimes girls come in here and they ask for tampons.” So that scene, two dudes don’t come up with that — it’s research.

One of the things that I found interesting was that you never show Ms. Nowak’s private life. You never show her car, you never show her apartment, who she’s dating, nothing. Talk a little bit about the decision of keeping everything at the school.

ÇATAK: It was kind of also an idea that I had to protect towards the financiers because they were all like, “Why don’t we see anything of her? We don’t know who she is. Who is that person?” And I said to them, “If you look at her decisions you will actually see who she is,” and that’s what I genuinely think. Like, it doesn’t matter if you’re a dog person or a cat person, or if you eat cheese or fruits in the morning. It doesn’t matter. These things don’t really say anything about a person. A character is revealed when that character has to make a decision, and even more so when that decision is taken under pressure. That’s my opinion. That’s how we went with this. And I think it was not just that, it was also like I was trying to shape my own production circumstances — I wanted to have time with my actors, I wanted to be in this particular school and not leave it and lose time with moving a set or anything. So, it went both ways.

Image via Sony Pictures Classics

When you saw the shooting schedule and you knew what was in front of you, what was the day you had circled in terms of, “I cannot wait to film this,” and what was the day you had circled in terms of, “How the F are we gonna film this?”

ÇATAK: [Laughs] Well, how the F are we gonna film this was definitely in the gym. Because when you give kids a ball, there is no more controlling. I turned to my DP [Judith Kaufmann] and I said, “I think this is slipping out of my hands,” and she said, “Well, then you have to let go.” She’s a very, very, very wise woman. Very, very fantastic person, and very experienced. She’s 20 years older than me. Then I let go, and they played ball and we filmed how they played. And then at some point they were exhausted, and then I gained control again.

So I’m fascinated by the editing process. I ask this of every director I speak to — who did you first show the movie to for honest feedback, and what did you learn from those early screenings that impacted the finished film?

ÇATAK: That’s actually a question nobody has ever asked me. I think the one of the first people I showed this film to, of course, was my producer. I had a bet going on with him, because he said to me, “Do you really need this last final shot?”

Of him being pulled out with the police?

ÇATAK: Right.

Oh, wow.

ÇATAK: Yeah, he was like, “Are you really gonna shoot this?” And I said, “Yeah, I’d like to shoot it. Let me shoot it.” And he said, “Let’s have a bet — you’re not gonna use it. Here’s €100.” I said, “Okay, bet’s on.” And then we edited the film and I was, again, insecure, and I showed him the cut, and I said, “I’m not sure about this ending.” All he did was pull out the money and give it to me, and said, “You just leave it like that.” Because to me it was like, I was thinking in filmic grammar. You break the grammar of the film because it’s not her perspective. It’s the first time there’s a scene without Carla. And he said, “No, no, no, no, no. You know what? We’re gonna keep it. We’re gonna keep it because you don’t wanna be one of those European arthouse films that end on a silent note.” [Laughs] And I had just made a film like that, and I said, “Alright.” So we kept it.

Then the second person who I actually showed it to was a colleague of mine, Christian Schwochow. He’s a director. He did The Crown, and all of that stuff, and he saw it and he said, “Well, it’s a great film.” And I said, “Really, Christian?” He said, “Yes, it’s a great film. Don’t worry. It’s gonna be good.” And that was like the time where we got all these rejections. So yeah, I tried to show it to people whom I know that they are gonna tell me the truth no matter what.

Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes or no?

ÇATAK: The funny thing about the deleted scenes was that in the writing process, we had this rule. We had, like, two rules, basically. One of them was never leave the school, and the second one was, if there is no conflict in a scene, then we probably don’t need it. And I’m saying probably because there were some scenes in the screenplay that I shot but that didn’t make it to the film, and those were actually the ones without conflict.

So there were no really big changes in the editing room then?

ÇATAK: No. You know, usually what you do in the editing is, like, you edit a film in a rough cut and you have, like, 120 minutes and then you look for ways to trim it down to 100, or even to 90. I’ve been editing my whole life. I started out editing, so I always, with my editor [Gesa Jäger], I have my own keyboard and she’s there, and we work together. I said to her, “Let’s just try and make a rough cut of 80 minutes and then work our way up to 90.” And she said, “Are you for sure?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on,” and then I just threw away scenes. The problem with the other way is that you get attached to scenes. The more time you invest in them, the more time you’re investing in a scene, the more time you invest in making that scene work, it gets harder to say bye-bye to them, to kill that darling. That’s why I like to just be very rough in the beginning and just keep it as short as possible. I saw this film by the Safdie Brothers called Uncut Gems. That film gave me a heart attack…

I think it gave everyone a heart attack.

Image via A24

ÇATAK: And I adored it because that film, you can see that they are the same. They don’t wanna bore their audience. I realize, it’s probably social media or something that my patience is just going away. I don’t have patience anymore. And the same with my own film. I watch it and I’m, like, bored. That’s why I tried to keep this short and fast-paced.

Well, it’s interesting because I’ve spoken to a lot of directors and they talk about how, say it’s a comedy and there’s a lot of jokes in it. They’ve seen the jokes 1,000 times. They no longer think it’s funny, and they will cut really hysterical jokes that they have to put back in after they do a test screening, and they remember, “Oh, wait, this is still funny.”

ÇATAK: I always say comedy is the champions league, to be honest. That, for instance, like when it’s about jokes. First of all, you tell a joke, it’s a bad joke, that’s the worst thing that can happen, right? But when a film pulls it off, it’s always great. I would love to do a comedy at some point.

Another thing about the film, which I don’t know if anyone noticed, is that you never reveal the location. You never say what town, what city. It’s somewhere. I’m assuming this is a very deliberate choice.

ÇATAK: Yeah. And at the same time, what does it add if you say, “This is Berlin or Hamburg?” Except for the financiers who will cheer, because in Germany you have these funds, like local funds that provide money to films, and then of course they love to see the city. But in this case, I was really like, “No, no, no, no, let’s try and make this universal. Let’s try and make a film that could actually take place anywhere.”

Did your financiers really beg you to do one thing, or did they have any good notes that you actually said, “Actually, that’s a good note. I’m gonna put that in?”

ÇATAK: Yeah, one good note was that we can start this film later. So we threw away the first 20 pages in the second draft, because the film started with a job interview. It was like a job interview where she was talking about her private life, and you had the dean saying, “Oh, you’re a math teacher. I do math as well.” And then you start little by little into the story. But one of the very good comments was, “You can actually start this story with the scene that you just saw, with the interrogation,” and everything before, those were 19 or 20 pages or something, we just threw them away.

‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ Director Responds to Letterboxd Theories
Image via Sony Pictures Classics

Did your financiers or producers say anything, because you never definitively say if she did steal the money. It’s implied strongly, but it could have been someone wearing a different shirt. So did they ever say, “Could you make it more definitive?”

ÇATAK: They didn’t say, “Could you make it more definitive,” but I sometimes like to go on Letterboxd, that’s like the IMDb of our times, and read the comments, and some people are really mad at the film that it’s not being revealed who did it. [Laughs] And I always thought, you know, it’s not about that. It’s not about that. It’s about how every society needs a scapegoat, and how when there is a crisis, you have that in politics oftentimes, how you just have to make a sacrifice upon sacrifice to keep the system going. And I like to be confronted as an audience with my own prejudice and my own assumptions, and one of the comments on Letterboxd, I thought was very smart. The guy said, “I think she did it and I think you did it.” And that’s the point.

I’m obviously not gonna ask you to reveal this here, but do you have a definitive whether or not she stole the money?

ÇATAK: I don’t, but I had this moment where we had a table read, and Eva [Löbau], the actor who’s playing Mrs. Kuhn, she’s a very emotional person and not just emotional, but also smart. And after the table read, I asked those 20-something people in the room, “How many of you think she did it?” Almost everyone raised their arms, and I looked at Eva and she was almost weeping. She was like, “How can you think that?” Because she was advocating for her character. And I said to her, “You know what? If they all think that you’re guilty, then we must just go the other way. We need to work against that, so let’s make her innocent.”

Oh, interesting. That’s a definitive thing.

ÇATAK: My direction to her was, “She’s completely innocent. I want you to act as if you’re innocent.”

So that’s your direction, but not necessarily the film’s answer.

ÇATAK: No, the film’s answer is up to you.

Exactly. I just wanted to distinguish that. So, have you listened to people’s conversations? One of the things I’ve always found is after a movie gets out, everyone goes to the bathroom and I’ve had some director friends say to me, who are not known directors, they’ll just hang out in the bathroom and listen to what people are saying to get the unfiltered what people are really thinking about a movie. So, have you listened to what people are saying about the film?

ÇATAK: No, I don’t go to toilets anymore.

[Laughs] Not necessarily the toilet but you know what I mean? Like listening to what people are actually saying?

ÇATAK: I read the comments on the internet. I listened to the podcasts that mention the film. Of course, I’ve been really lucky with this film because we got so much love for it. I don’t know if I would still be listening to this stuff if the film wasn’t received that well. But yeah, of course. You make a film, you make it for an audience, you wanna know what the audience thinks. And at the same time, it’s obvious that you cannot make a film for an audience. You need to make your film first and foremost, but you hope that the film that you make for yourself also resonates with a lot of people. So this is kind of a sometimes tricky thing. So I try to think of my audience, but at the same time, I’m like, “Am I thinking of the audience right now or am I bending?”

I’m not sure how the film has played in Germany, but has it led to any conversations or people debating about the school system or anything like that?

ÇATAK: Yeah, I always get these questions where people ask me about, “What do you think needs to be improved in the school system?” I had a couple of panels with politicians, as well, and I always say, “Guys, I’m just a filmmaker. There should be experts on this.” But one thing I really don’t understand, or I do understand and I really don’t approve of, was when I went to school — I told you about my research time in schools — and schools in Germany start at 8 a.m. I was sitting in that class and everybody was almost about to sleep because it’s 8 a.m. They got up at seven or even six, and I was thinking, like, “There is scientific proof that that time of the day is not the optimal time to learn.” It’s like 10, 11. That’s the time when kids actually learn the best, but for some reason that never changes. And then I asked around and I thought, “Why is it like that?” And people told me it’s because parents can drop off their kids and go to work. So, it’s a bit like that one sentence that one of the teachers says in the film, like, “We are just producing mini units for our economy.” We’re getting them through the system so they can work for the economy, and that’s one thing that I would probably wanna improve. But yeah, I always steer clear of those questions because there’s a lot of things that could be improved, actually.

It’s funny, I’ve read a lot of articles about how it would be so much better if schools were from 9 to 5 or 9 to 4 or later, as you said. It’s just that it’s not gonna change because of the parents’ work schedule.

ÇATAK: Oh, and then another thing that could be improved, of course, is these teachers, they’re overworked and underpaid.

100%.

ÇATAK: In Germany, we have a lack of 25,000 teachers because nobody wants to pick up this job anymore. It’s just not worth it, you know? And they need to be valued.

I have friends that are teachers and they’re doing God’s work, and I’m not joking when I say that. I really do firmly believe that. I could keep on going on about this, but I think about the scene in your film with all the parents yelling at the teacher, and it’s very frustrating because the parents put so much on the teacher and nothing on themselves.

ÇATAK: Exactly. I mean, back in the day when I went to school, my parents would say, “If the teacher says so it must be right. Don’t oppose the teacher.” And now it’s quite the opposite. Now, it’s like, “Why is my kid getting this bad grade? Isn’t this your responsibility?” So, you know, there has been an erosion of this job, not just in terms of status but also in terms of authority. The teacher is not an authority anymore. And some teachers said to me, “All these parents, they wanna be friends with their kids and they don’t teach them how to respect authority. They expect us to teach that to them, but if they don’t get that at home, they’re not gonna show any respect for my authority.”

I completely agree.

Ilker Çatak’s Next Film is Turkish Drama ‘Yellow Papers’

So you made this film, obviously, a year-and-a-half ago. What have you been writing/working on, and have you found it easier to be getting meetings with people about financing?

ÇATAK: Yeah. Okay, here’s the thing. I was hustling for my projects a lot, really. My next project I was setting up before this film came out, and my producer said to me, “We can only make this film by not earning a dime and make it really, really low-to-no-budget.” And I said, “Okay, we’re not doing this for the money.” So then Berlin opened and all of a sudden everybody wanted to be on board, everybody wanted to be part of my next film, and I realized — by the way, this is my fifth film — and I realized it’s really not about the film or the stuff that you’ve written, it’s about you as a stock. You’re a stock, the filmmaker, the artist is a stock. It’s like buying Apple shares. They wanna be part of that, and they wanna be part of the possible success. Because that has been successful now, now they’re thinking, “The next one is gonna be successful as well, so we should be on board.” It’s ridiculous.

Listen, you’re saying the quiet stuff out loud.

ÇATAK: Yeah, that’s the fun part.

Listen, I give you credit. So, what are you directing next or have you directed something?

ÇATAK: Yeah, I told you about how I had to protect this film, so now I’m making a film about… My family is Turkish, of Turkish origin, and I’m making a film about this artist couple who’s not aligned with the politics. They are the stars of the national theater. She’s an actor, like she’s the main diva actor, and he’s a writer, and they lose their jobs overnight. The film then shows their everyday struggle not knowing how to cope with the situation. They have a child that needs to go to school but the private schools are too expensive, the public schools are under a severe agenda, and they are faced with the sellout of their artistic ideals as parents and artists. It’s a story about marriage, it’s a story about how to keep your artistic integrity, and how to live a life where you can look in the mirror.

Does it have a title?

ÇATAK: It’s called Yellow Letters.

When are you gonna film it?

ÇATAK: We’re actually prepping it right now. We’re shooting. Principal shooting starts in May.

So, really soon.

ÇATAK: It’s right around the corner.

This is my last thing for you. Have you cast it up yet or are you still casting?

ÇATAK: Yeah, I have. I have cast it up.

But you haven’t announced.

ÇATAK: We have actually announced, but you wouldn’t know them because I wanted to make sure it’s really people who devoted their lives to theater. I found actors from Turkey that have done a lot of theater and are not TV stars or anything.

The Teachers’ Lounge is in theaters now.

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