The Kindergarten Teacher
Writer-director Sara Colangelo and producer-star Maggie Gyllenhaal adapt Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s award-winning film for a timely reflection on how we value art in society. A devoted teacher takes interest in a young student's creative potential after hearing his poetry, but she soon crosses the line into obsession.
Stuck in Staten Island, married to a kind but oblivious husband, and living with kids that mostly ignore her, forty-year-old Lisa Spinelli plods through her days teaching kindergarten with growing numbness. Her one source of joy is an evening poetry class across the bay in Lower Manhattan. But one day everything changes - Lisa discovers that a five-year-old boy in her class may be the poet she can only dream of being. She becomes fascinated. Could this child be a prodigy? A Mozart? Fascination turns to obsession as Lisa pushes boundaries to protect the boy from a banal life she knows too well. In a harrowing climax, Lisa risks her career, her family, and her freedom to nurture his genius and possibly tap into her own.