Umberto Riccioni Carteni’s Classmates takes the familiar inspirational-teacher formula and grounds it in the harsher realities facing disadvantaged students on the outskirts of Rome.
Umberto Riccioni Carteni’s Classmates hits many of the familiar beats of the high-school drama. Think Dangerous Minds, The Principal or Heartbreak High: stories centred around disadvantaged young people either sinking into, or pushing back against, the societal roles forced upon them.
What gives Classmates a little more weight is that its characters are biographical. The film is based on Gaja Cenciarelli’s book of the same name.
Set in a high school on the outskirts of Rome, Classmates follows Professore, played by Anna Ferzetti, as she takes charge of an English class populated largely by students who have already been written off by both the curriculum and their peers.
Rather than wrestling for control against their attitudes, Professore meets them at their level. She learns how they communicate, earns their trust and gradually begins challenging their understanding of what they might actually be capable of achieving.
Challenging Expectations
Classmates is at its best when examining the relationship between social expectation and self-belief.
The students have spent so long struggling against the system that many have internalised the same question: why work hard when failure is already expected? Why imagine a different future when the world outside the classroom appears to offer so few options?
Professore’s methods are criticised by colleagues who regard the class as beyond help. Slowly, however, her approach begins producing tangible results.
Motivated to earn a pass, test scores improve, along with self-worth and classroom participation.
Importantly, Carteni avoids presenting Professore as solely responsible for that shift. The students still have to put in the hard yards, persevere and begin imagining that their abilities might extend beyond the boundaries imposed upon them.
All the while, they continue dealing with the daily struggles waiting outside the classroom.
More Than An Inspirational Teacher Story
Being overtly biographical, Classmates is considerably darker than its inspirational premise initially suggests.
Beneath the comedy, respect and affection between Professore and her students are problems that cannot simply be solved by better grades.
Substance abuse, self-harm and destructive behaviour emerge in response to deeper emotional problems.
Each student pursues a different version of a better future. While some find ways forward, those paths are marked by setbacks and disappointment.
This is where Classmates becomes more interesting than the conventional inspirational-underdog story.
Its message isn’t that hard work automatically guarantees success. Instead, it argues that perseverance and human connection still matter, even when circumstances remain unfair.
When The Drama Gives Too Much Away
Unfortunately, Carteni’s desire to make each student’s individual story explicit sometimes works against the drama.
The film repeatedly transitions into character monologues that effectively reveal an entire arc before it has played out. In doing so, later developments lose some of their dramatic weight.
It also risks reducing complex young people to illustrations of predetermined social destinies — which feels like precisely the kind of categorisation the film itself is trying to challenge.
There’s also a noticeable lull around the forty-minute mark, with the film idling for another twenty minutes through repetitive tantrums and increasingly bleak character decisions.
Some of those moments lack the impact they should have because so much has already been foreshadowed.
Final Thoughts
Despite those issues, Classmates remains sincere.
It’s a genuine exploration of refusing to give up — both on yourself and on other people.
Sometimes, someone simply needs to be reached by the right person at the right time.
Classmates screens as part of the 2026 Palace Italian Film Festival.
6/10 — challenging personalities.
