Monsieur Lazhar
written by Philippe Falardeau, from the play by Évelyne de la Chenelière.
Alice L'Écuyer (Sophie Nélisse): My school is beautiful. Maybe not the most beautiful, but it's mine. At first when I started coming here, my mom kept saying how beautiful it was. Personally, I thought the school was ok. But now, six years later, I also think it's beautiful. Because it's mine. A nice yard to play soccer and basketball, where parents drop off their kids in the morning. They take care of us, they check to see if we have lice, if we have good teeth, if we're aggressive or hyperactive. But this beautiful school, is where Marine Lachance hanged herself. With her blue scarf, from the big pipe, on a Wednesday night. My mom was in Miami because she's an airline pilot. I wish she had come back right away, because I really had a tough time. Martine must have been discouraged with her life. The last thing she did, was kick her chair to make it fall over. Sometimes I wonder, if she wasn't sending a violent message. When we're violent, we get detention. But we can't give Martine Lachance detention, because she's dead.
Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag): There is nothing to say about an unjust death. Nothing at all. As we will now show. From the branch of an olive tree, there hung a tiny chryalis the color of an emerald. Tomorrow she'd be a pretty butterfly, freed from its cocoon. The tree was happy to see his chrysalis grown, but secretly, he wanted to keep her a few more years. "So long as she remembers me. " He'd shielded her from gusts, saved her from ants. But tomorrow she would leave to alone face predators and poor weather. That night, a fire ravaged the forest, and the chrysalis never became a butter?y. At dawn, the ashes cold, the tree still stood, but his heart was charred, scarred by the flames, scarred at grief. Ever since then, when a bird alights on the tree, the tree tells it about the chrysalis that never woke up. He pictures her, wings spread, flitting across a clear blue sky, drunk on nectar and freedom, the discreet witness to our love stories.