School teacher Nira (Sarit Larry) is convinced her five-year-old student Yoav (Avi Shnaidman) is a child prodigy with a talent for composing poetry. Amazed and inspired by this young boy, she decides to protect his talent in spite of the fact that his mother ran off with her lover, and his hotshot restauranteur father has little time for his son. Nira begins to write Yoav’s poetry down and tries to persuade his family to have it published, even taking Yoav to readings and pressing him to join a world that vastly exceeds his understanding.

This is Israeli writer/director Nadav Lapid’s second feature. An intriguing drama, The Kindergarten Teacher combines realism with cinematic flights-of-fancy that are at once bizarre, beautiful and deeply unsettling.