In the movie Forbidden Games, which was originally released in theaters in 1952 (with a 2015 restoration and theatrical rerelease), a young French girl orphaned in a Nazi air attack is befriended by the son of a poor farmer, and together they try to come to terms with the realities of death.
When her parents are killed by an air strike while trying to flee Paris during the German invasion, 5-year-old Brigitte Fossey wanders into the French countryside, where she encounters 11-year-old peasant boy 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 Clémént’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.
