"I had the impression that many foreign spectators were discovering an updated image of France," said Cantet, speaking Thursday just after he heard that his film was among five nominated for the best foreign-language Oscar.

"This mix of cultures, all this complex relationship that we have with the national identity, it's a question that is topical at the moment," the silver-haired 47-year-old said. "I think that the film gives a fairly accurate image of French society."

France's films, like its television programmes, have mostly failed to reflect the ethnic diversity of a country where millions of residents are foreign-born or of foreign-born parents, and which has Europe's biggest Muslim and Jewish communities.

Minorities also remain for the most part locked out of the political and business elites.

But Barack Obama's rise to the US presidency has stirred debate here about minorities, and President Nicolas Sarkozy last month appointed an equal opportunities commissioner to draft an action plan to promote diversity at elite schools, in business and in the media.

Cantet touches on race and a range of other topics in his low-budget social drama, based on a novel by a teacher who also plays the fictional teacher in the film alongside fictional students played by real high-school kids.

Racial and cultural differences, power dynamics, teaching techniques and the use and misuse of language are all handled with aplomb in the setting of the school, which Cantet sees as one of the few places where people of diverse social and ethnic backgrounds are forced to mix.

As he criss-crossed the globe in recent months to attend screenings of the film and talk with audiences, Cantet said he realised "how much this little universe of a class in the 20th arrondissement (or district) of Paris we managed to open a window on the reality of our country."

"I remember two Chinese girls who were at the screening in Cannes," said Cantet, speaking in the Paris offices of the Haut et Court film production company as French media queued up to interview the Oscar nominee.

"They told me they were very surprised by the film and how at the same time it explained to them what they were discovering when they came for the first time to France.

"When they arrived on the streets of Paris they couldn't recognise the image they had had of it. They said the film was explaining to them exactly in which country they were arriving.

"I think it's important for me to give this image of the country to these audiences," he said.

Cantet has touched on thorny social issues repeatedly in his career. His first feature was "Human Resources", a 1999 movie looked at generational and class conflict at a moribund factory.

Two years later "Time Out" dealt with a man unable to admit to his wife and friends that he has lost his job, and in 2005 he brought out "Heading South," whose plot follows three women sex tourists at a Haitian beach resort.

Cantet said he was "very happy, very moved", at being in the running for the Oscar best foreign-language film award to be presented on February 22.

"I will attend the Oscar ceremonies but I don't know yet about the students," who joined him on the stage last May to receive the Palme D'Or top prize at the Cannes film festival.

(AFP/Expatica)