Teachers' profession can be said to consist of at least two aspects, teaching and leading. Teaching summarizes subject matters and didactic knowledge, leading is the social part of teachers' work, for example arranging a learning environment, rules, discipline and teacher-pupil-interaction. Teachers are, of course, the formal leaders, managers, in schools and classrooms. They are put in this position by formal law and social customary. At the same time, teachers do have a choice how they exercise their part as a leader depending on personal preferences, their own education and, again, legal and social boundaries.. What is considered as good respectively bad leadership for a teacher is changeable.

Teachers and schools are a common theme for film and television. The dramatic focus lies on the social aspects of school and classroom life, the relation between teachers and pupils for example, subject matters are rarely depicted. This means teachers are mainly portrayed in their role as leaders.

Mass media, such as television and films, give direction to discourses in society. Analyzing them can give a clue to what matters concern at a certain time period and in a certain society. In Sweden the film Torment (Hets) written by Ingmar Bergman in 1944 has been influencing public discourse about school and teaching since then.

In this paper we are going to analyze how teachers' leadership is depicted in this film. Using directed material as empirical data allows us to ask “Who is the good teacher and who is the bad – or evil – teacher?”

In our discussion we will look at how the formal manager role that teachers get by law and social customary leaves space for different kinds of teachers' leadership. Will bigger juridical authority for teachers prevent evil teaching, or is the opposite more plausible? But even common ideas of morality will have to be considered and discussed; why is a certain type of leader connected with the role of the good hero and the other one is the evil villain? Is this the only way the different styles of leadership can be looked at?