This thoroughly delightful documentary by Nicolas Philibert has a miraculous simplicity and clarity - and yet displays its own deeply intelligent sort of sophistication.

Philibert has followed a year in the life of an infant school in rural France: one teacher and a dozen or so little kids, aged from four to 10, all taught by him in one room. M Georges Lopes is a few years shy of retirement, apparently childless and unmarried, having dedicated himself to teaching very small children.

He offers them, and us, a kind of back-to-basics civics lesson and combines gentle, coaxing patience, mild admonitions and a deeply felt concern for his pupils' well-being.

Philibert's camera responds to the eternal mystery of their faces, and the future-ghosts of the adults they will become. In its humanity and its quietly passionate idealism, this film is a tonic.