Log in Sign up

The Emperor's Club

2002 · TMDB 7.1

Directed by Michael Hoffman

William Hundert is a passionate and principled Classics professor who finds his tightly-controlled world shaken and inexorably altered when a new student, Sedgewick Bell, walks into his classroom. What begins as a fierce battle of wills gives way to a close student-teacher relationship, but results in a life lesson for Hundert that will still haunt him a quarter of a century later.

Why it matters

Kevin Kline plays a classics teacher at a prestigious boys' school whose attempts to instil virtue in a charismatic but dishonest student lead to a decades-long reckoning. The film is a meditation on the limits of teaching and the persistence of character.

From The Classroom Without Walls

Chains through this film

Where this title sits in a journey — and where cinema takes you next.

Browse all chains

Where this film leads

Linked through chains, directors and neighbouring cinema.

Key contributors

Explore by topic