Forbidden Games

When her parents are killed by an air strike while trying to flee Paris during the German invasion, 5-year-old Paulette (Brigitte Fossey) wanders into the French countryside, where she encounters 11-year-old peasant boy Michel (Georges Poujouly). And as they build a special, secret friendship, the adults play their own games of buffoonish peasant feuds. A masterpiece of French post-war cinema by director René Clément (Purple Noon), with a haunting hit score played by guitar virtuoso Narciso Yepes, the ultimately beautiful, hilarious and disturbing Games won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival — and then became a worldwide art house smash, eventually winning a Grand Prix at Cannes, the Best Foreign Film Award from the New York Film Critics Circle, and Clément’s second Best Foreign Film Oscar winner. Fossey (“in a performance that rips the heart out” – New York Times) is a star of French films to this day. This new restoration from Rialto Pictures features an all-new translation and subtitles.