01
Forbidden Games
Why this pick
Its wartime France is seen through children improvising meaning amid adult catastrophe, with the same unsentimental tenderness and quietly devastating moral weight.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1987 1h 44m FRA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Au Revoir les Enfants
Drama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Au Revoir les Enfants, try these.
01
02
A Bag of Marbles
Why this pick
Another intimate occupied-France childhood story, focused on a boy’s shifting understanding of danger, identity and separation rather than battlefield spectacle.
03
Hope and Glory
Why this pick
Like Malle’s film, it filters World War II through a child’s observant, sometimes mischievous perspective while letting fear and loss emerge naturally from daily life.
04
The Spirit of the Beehive
Why this pick
Its hushed rural imagery, child-centered gaze and gradual encounter with political trauma echo the restraint, mystery and emotional aftershock of Au Revoir les Enfants.
05
The Tin Drum
Why this pick
A far more surreal companion, but its child’s-eye view of fascism similarly makes historical cruelty feel immediate, intimate and ethically unsettling.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
During the winter of 1943–44, Julien Quentin, a student at a Carmelite boarding school in occupied France, is returning to school from vacation. He acts tough to the students at the school, but he is actually a pampered boy who misses his mother deeply. Saddened to be returning to the tedium of boarding school, Julien's classes seem uneventful until Père Jean, the headmaster, introduces three new pupils. One of them, Jean Bonnet, is the same age as Julien. Like the other students, Julien at first despises Bonnet, a socially awkward boy with a talent for arithmetic and playing the piano.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Gaspard Manesse
Julien Quentin
Raphael Fejtö
Jean Bonnet / Kippelstein
Francine Racette
Mme Quentin
Stanislas Carre de Malberg
François Quentin, frère de Julien
Philippe Morier-Genoud
Père Jean
François Négret
Joseph
François Berléand
Père Michel
Peter Fitz
Muller