To Be and to Have · reception & legacy
2002 · Nicolas Philibert
How To Be and to Have has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A surprise sensation in 2002 — a quiet documentary about a one-room village school that became a genuine box-office hit in France and won the Prix Louis Delluc — its afterglow was complicated when its beloved teacher sued the filmmakers, and it's now remembered both as a doc-cinema high point and a cautionary tale.
What's debated
The debate it still sparks isn't about the film itself but about documentary ethics: when a non-fiction film makes real money, does its subject deserve a cut — and did the lawsuit retroactively puncture the film's warmth?
Its footprint
Teacher Georges Lopez briefly became a national figure in France, and the film turned into the go-to reference point whenever film culture argues about what documentarians owe the people they film.
Where it stands
A fixture of the 2000s documentary canon — the gentle, humane classroom film cinephiles recommend as proof that observational documentary can be tender without being sentimental.