This is the story of a teacher who cares deeply about his students.
He wants to infect them with his passion for one of the greatest writers alive - Fyodor Dostoyevsky. But the indifference he faces in one of the boys, makes him cross the line of what's socially acceptable.
I was always what they call “a maths person” and for a long time,
I avoided fiction books. Especially at school. This story is loosely based on a lesson that made me want to read Crime and Punishment
(and all major Dostoevsky’s works as a result).
A strong teacher figure is invaluable. A good educator can completely change the trajectory of our lives. I believe this happened to me
and I know this happened to a lot of people.
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Why This and Why Now?
The challenges teachers have have never been more complicated. Should teaching methods adapt to the rise of Artificial Intelligence? Is reading books at school something we should still encourage?
We believe it’s necessary to have that conversation now. There's a change not only in the way education works but also in the balance of forces between the nations.
And with Putin being one of the forces threatening that balance, it’s more important than ever to study the great writer and thinker, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who foresaw dangerous ideas being born in Russia. Some of the greatest minds acknowledged Dostoyevsky as a great influence in their lives including Albert Einstein, Akira Kurosawa, and Ernest Hemingway. Albert Camus called The Brothers Karamazov "the book that teaches you everything about life".
It’s the best time to look into a classroom where the most extraordinary lesson about Crime and Punishment unfolds.
But really - Crime and Punishment just serves as a background of where the characters are emotionally. More than anything, this short film is a window into the character of Mr. Valentine, and cited Yellow Ticket stands for a symbol of self-sacrifice, representing the uneasy choices that people are sometimes forced to make.