Tusen gånger starkare (2010)

The film depicts Signe, a shy 15-year-old girl in a rowdy middle-school class led by teacher Olle and dominated by the boys, who can do as they please without being reprimanded or challenged by the teachers. The boys decide which girls are acceptable and which are not. Most of the girls do not dare to speak up in class, and the teachers ignore them. One day, the class gets a new student, Saga. Her unusual background and rule-breaking appearance pique the girls’ interest and earn her their respect. Olle asks her to give the girls more space in the classroom. She is “a thousand times stronger” than the other girls because she dares to take up space in the same way the boys do. The girls appreciate this, pluck up the courage to follow her example, and gradually gain more of a say in class. But this leads to chaos and is strongly resented by the boys, who feel threatened, and by Olle too, because it calls his habitual patterns of behavior into question; he takes the boys’ side. Olle eventually changes the teaching format to individual work to see whether that improves things in the class. Mimi and Ludde disrupt the lesson with their antics, and Saga tells them to stop several times. Olle observes that the situation in the class has become more fraught since she joined. Saga calls him a hypocrite and leaves the classroom. Signe stands up and says she agrees with Saga, and Saga observes that Signe is not like the others in the class. According to Signe, when the girls fought back, they felt that everyone was against them, and consequently became afraid.