16/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: Austria’s grande dame of documentary features, Ruth Beckermann, captures a primary-school class over three years in Vienna’s immigrant-heavy Favoriten district

Favoriten, often denounced as dangerous and shady, was once a classical workers’ district in the south of Vienna. The workers are still there, but today, about one-third of them can trace their roots back to the Balkan countries or Turkey. A Viennese melting pot, a parallel universe, in which German is seldom spoken and integration is optional for survival. The same situation can be found in its schools. More than 60% of primary-school students do not speak German as their first language. The system that is supposed to take care of that, however, is riddled with a lack of educators and funding.

This is the outset of Ruth Beckermann's latest documentary feature, Favoriten [+see also:
interview: Ruth Beckermann
film profile], named after the district itself, which has opened the Encounters section at the 74th Berlinale. Over three years, from 2020-2023, she and her camera team accompanied 25 kids and their teacher, Ilkay Idiskut, from second to fourth grade (ages 7-10), at the biggest primary school in Vienna. It’s a time frame which took them from playing games and learning to read to the first big milestone in their young lives. What kind of secondary education is on the cards for them? How well will they handle the language? Will they be confined to being second-generation offspring with no opportunities, or can they break into a market of possibilities that is usually reserved for an Austrian-bred mainstream society?

Beckermann understands that merely watching the day-to-day business of class and education isn’t going to cut it in order to tell this story. She and her DoP, Johannes Hammel, dive into the crowd of kids, quietly moving among them and observing. There are very few shots taken from above the eyeline of the children. The viewer meets them as equals, as fully fleshed-out individuals. In a smart move, the film team also passed on phones to the students to allow them to film themselves. This removal of an external party, this personal curating of what the kids want to show of their lives, creates a more immediate bond between viewers and protagonists.

While the sheer number of students does not allow us to dwell on every single one of them, the movie manages to present its conflicts and themes via a select few. There is one ambitious girl who calls out other kids for speaking Turkish, and not German, in class. There are those boys who feel they should be able to tell girls what to wear and what not. It is a society riddled with questions of identity and migration, of children caught between tradition at home and Austrian integration.

Beckermann also manages to incorporate the larger picture of education politics in Austria, the lack of funding and personnel, and the impending shortcomings that the children will thus experience. Ilkay Idiskut may shine with her dynamic teaching and her drive to seek a fruitful debate with her students, but it is hard to overlook the fact that she is alone in a classroom full of kids who would benefit from additional staff. There is a teachers’ meeting in which the head announces that there will be no budget for further German classes, or access to social workers or psychologists. It’s a system where everything is stacked against these schools, and a problem to which politicians turn a blind eye.

It's hard to say where life will take these youngsters. But by spending some time with them, Beckermann offers a moving glimpse into a world, into the potential of young minds – the minds of people who, despite having the odds stacked against them, are often willing to fight the uphill battle for self-realisation.

Favoriten was produced by Austria’s Ruth Beckermann Filmproduktion, with Autlook Filmsales in charge of its international sales.