Part of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s mission is to foster greater understanding through world cinema. This year 72 Foreign Language films were submitted for Golden Globes consideration. Here is an overview of one of them

The German comedy Help, I Shrunk My Teacher tells the story of 11-year-old schoolboy Felix Vorndran (Oscar Keymar), whom nobody believes when he says that he has “shrunk” the universally hated school principal Frau Dr. Schmitt-Gössenwein (Anja Kling) to a tiny height of just 15 centimeters. Even Felix himself does not exactly know how it happened. He suggests to everyone who might listen that maybe it has something to do with the ghost of the school’s founder Herr Otto Leonhard (Otto Waalkes).

But now Felix has the problem on his hands or, to be more precise, in his backpack. Because that is where the “mini-principal” Frau Dr. Schmitt-Gössenwein is residing now and she is still extremely unpleasant and unbearable. Together with his friend Ella (Lina Huesker) and against his school rival Mario (Georg Sulzer) and the latter’s father, Felix has to try everything to get Frau Dr. Schmitt-Gössenwein back to her normal size even if he does not want it that much. Wouldn’t it be nice if the (not so) esteemed Frau Doctor could just stop being so terrible …

The picture produced by Blue Eyes Pictures, Karibufilm and MINI Film is directed by Sven Unterwald Jr. (7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Woods) and based on the novel by Sabine Ludwig. The screenwriters Gerrit Hermans, Silija Clemens and Florian Schumacher skillfully use not only the material from the novel, but (very possibly!) incorporate in their screenplay all the frustrations and fantasies of the school years which practically every person on Earth can relate to.

This comedy nicely fits into the relatively new trend of locally made comedies in the German language, which can become a serious box office threat to the American blockbusters. One of the German online critics Bianka Piringer wrote on her website about Help, I Shrunk My Teacher: “It is high speed movie adventure embellished with an extra dose of magic spirits. It is imaginative and visually very attractive … A bit of fantasy with a school spirit, an exciting detective game, but also the inclusion of issues such as the balance between parental work and family life or the school dealing with social inequality”. 
Serge Rakhlin