Did you ever have a teacher who changed your life?

This uplifting movie, written and directed by New York-based filmmaker Christopher Zalla, is a potent reminder that we should never give up on children.

Stephen Romei

In Radical, it’s 2011 and Sergio Juarez Correa has just arrived at an elementary school in the impoverished, crime-ridden town of Matamoros in northeastern Mexico

3 min read

10:59AMMay 30, 2024

Did you have a teacher who changed your life for the better? Sergio Juarez Correa (Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez) is such a teacher in the inspirational drawn-from-life drama Radical.

This uplifting movie, written and directed by New York-based filmmaker Christopher Zalla, is a potent reminder that we should never give up on children, because to do so is to give up on the future.

It’s 2011 and Sergio has just arrived at an elementary school in the impoverished, crime-ridden town of Matamoros in northeastern Mexico. “He’s got a pulse, he’s hired,’’ observes one of his new colleagues.

The long-term teachers are there not for the students but for themselves. They earn bonuses based on overall student performance and facilitate cheating to make that happen.

Nevertheless, the school is one of the academically poorest in the country. Half of its six graders drop out, leaving education behind at the age of 12. There are no computers, no internet and the encyclopedia in the library is from 1974.

“We are failing,’’ the principal, Chucho (Daniel Haddad), tells his new teacher.

The children have commitments that outweigh education. There’s a telling moment when one, Lupe (Mia Fernanda Solis), who has two younger siblings, sees her mother resting in the living room, a pregnancy test on the table beside her.

The boys are dragged into the drug gangs. Their backpacks contain books and pens and something they are forbidden to look at. Nico (Danilo Guardiola) is handed a pistol by a gang member. “This is the real school, no?”

Not long afterwards, some students are walking home and pass dead bodies in the street, partly covered by sheets as the police do their work. The kids barely glance at corpses of young men not much older than themselves.

The other main student, Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), lives on a rubbish tip with her uneducated father. She wants to be an astronaut. Lupe is interested in philosophy. Nico would be anything but what he’s destined to be.

These impossible dreams are believed in by Sergio, who has a radical pedagogical approach. “It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong,’’ he tells the students on day one. “It matters that you try. Who wants to be wrong first?”

He tells them a fable about a donkey that thinks its way out of being buried in a well. “From now on, now matter how much shit rains down, we are not going to let it bury us. We will become the best students in the world.”

It’s good advice and the children respond. Yet it has its flaws in the dangerous world in which they live, as Sergio, who has a backstory behind his transfer to the school, will learn to his deep regret.

The other teachers dislike him, but the principal backs him and their odd friendship is one of the beauties of this film. Their alliance also adds a nice touch of comedy. When Sergio asks for “a tiny favour”, the principal finds himself in an outdoor tub helping the students understand a different principle: Archimedes’ one about water displacement.

Derbez, who was in the Oscar-winning 2021 drama CODA, is outstanding, as is Haddad as the principal and the young actors as the students.

“Sometimes believing is not enough,’’ Paloma tells Sergio when he visits her home to try to convince her father to let her pursue her dreams. “Look around,’’ she adds, gesturing to the festering garbage tip.

Paloma is a central figure in the source material for this movie: A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses, a 2013 article in Wired magazine by writer and filmmaker Joshua Davis. This screen adaptation shows us what she did under Sergio’s guidance. You can look up what she has achieved since.