Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The classroom door stands ajar in feelgood Mexican drama Radical: the sixth-graders of José Urbina López primary school clustered in the doorway. This is meant to be maths, but the desks have been upended and a game made of the lesson by their new teacher, impish showman Sergio Juárez Correa (Eugenio Derbez). A consensus soon forms among the kids: loco, clearly. Scepticism extends to his colleagues. Why would anyone want to teach here, in a historically failing school in the troubled border city Matamoros, riddled with the violence of the drug trade?In essence, all this is true. Sergio Juárez Correa was and is a school teacher in Matamoros, with a now renowned record in transforming young lives. The movie has naturally been trimmed and polished for maximal uplift, as movies tend to be. The 2013 article in Wired magazine the film is based on really centred on teaching methods. Here the pedagogy is gently led to the back seat.If the classroom is experimental, the movie is traditional: the story beats familiar, and finished with a big-screen sheen. Capturing poverty without either prettifying or exploiting is a skill. Director Christopher Zalla is never other than smart and sensitive, while drawing fine performances from his young cast — a sweet echo of this model relationship between teacher and student.★★★☆☆In UK cinemas from August 9
