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Watch: A Clip from Mark Jackson’s Slamdance Closing Night Film, This Teacher
25 New Face filmmaker and Spirit Award-winning director Mark Jackson’s latest film, This Teacher, is tonight’s closing night film at this 25th anniversary of the Slamdance Film Festival. Previously, the film won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s final edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival.
This Teacher follows a French Muslim woman (Cesar-winner Hafsia Herzi) as she travels to New York City to visit her childhood best friend from the rough neighborhoods outside of Paris. When the reunion proves disastrous, Hafsia steals her friend’s credit card and identity, and disappears to a remote cabin upstate. Deep in the woods and alone for the first time in her life, she experiences a divine revelation of an existence without borders. But when she discovers that she’s not alone on the property, Hafsia’s sojourn in nature gradually descends into a terrifying study of the intolerance and suspicion she encounters and reflects back to an Islamophobic America.
Jackson has given this clip to Filmmaker from the film’s last act — a tense conversation between Hafsia and a couple she encounters while in the woods at a remote cabin.
