To Be and to Have
2002 film by Nicolas Philibert
To Be and To Have (French: Être et avoir; also the UK title) is a 2002 French documentary film directed by Nicolas Philibert about a small rural school. It was screened as an "Out of Competition" film at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and achieved commercial success. The film became the subject of an unsuccessful legal action by the school's teacher, who said that he and the children's parents had been misled about the film's intended audience, and that he and the children had been exploited.
The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Mr Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.
The film won several awards, including the 2003 Sacramento French Film Festival Audience Prize.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%, based on 59 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A small, sensitive, and moving portrait of a teacher and his students." On Metacritic the film has a score of 87 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Lawsuit
Following the film's popularity in cinemas, Lopez, the principal personality in the documentary, made an unsuccessful attempt to sue the documentary's makers for a share of the €2 million profit.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “To Be and to Have” as 2002 film by Nicolas Philibert. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2002 film by Nicolas Philibert. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q593573. VIAF identifies the subject as 213276049. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “To Be and to Have” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.