MIFF Session #11: THE GRADUATION

La Femis is a French cinema school. The French take their cinema as seriously as they take their wine, having started on the ground floor and added the art to the commerce in the movies' Ur phase. This is the process of how thousands of applicants are wrung down to about thirty students. In a moment so polished by decades of delivery that it sounds scripted, one of the selectors at the start tells the mass before him that there will be no teachers or classes in the course.

The first round sees the great mass of initial aspirants shown a movie scene and given about half an hour to describe what they have seen. Those called back must present a narrative from a phrase or sample of dialogue. Further tests involve supervised scene shoots, written statements and personal stories. Eventually, all this will turn into numbers and the few will enter while the many walk away.

This documentary runs from a different angle from similar contest-based pieces , focusing on the selectors and their discussions of the people they have been speaking to. There are no freeeze-framed triumphs possible with this approach but there are many moments of revelation. The judgements of the panelists can be brutal but as the film progresses and you get a sense of the turnover you feel the benefit. In job interviews you are thrown a couple of pysche questions after the qualifications and experience grills and they are there to get the mettle out. This process emphasises that over the formal skills to find the commitment and the passion.

This is a procedural documentary. We get a strong feeling of cramped rooms, silent corridors, rustling paper forms and tension too early in the morning. They're French so all the selectors smoke in their breaks. Out on the fire escapes the talk is even rougher, coloured by thick plumes of Gitane fumes. It's tough stuff protecting your nation's cinema legacy. From the country that established an academy for the protection of its own language you wouldn't expect less.

Despite some frequent old-line fever as successive candidates seem to tell the same prepared stories of inspiration The Graduation sustains its engagement to the end and we are gratified with the group photo shoot at the end showing who got in. An end-credit sequence shows young people at the gate we started with. It's night now, many nights later, and we see the last of the unsuccessful quietly make their way out and down the street. Did we lose a Claire Denis, a Godard? We only know that we might never know.