Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman and curator Matthew Barrington talk to the BFI's Frederick Wiseman season curator Sandra Hebron about High School, the documentary film-maker's riveting portrait of life inside a large city high school, where social and moral values are handed down.

In High School Wiseman ventures inside a large city high school – the most everyday of American institutions – where lessons range from debates on existentialism to a simulated space flight. Assembled with dry humour, a series of formal and informal encounters between teachers, students, parents and administrators shows how education is steeped in the passing on of social and moral values.

High School is part of a collection of films available to stream on BFI Player.

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