Must-watchWorld War II · Film · 1987
Au revoir les enfants
In the winter of 1944 a boy at a Catholic boarding school befriends a clever new classmate and slowly realizes he is hiding a dangerous secret.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 1 places.
Stop 1: Petit Collège d'Avon, near Fontainebleau
Key location
Julien and Jean share books, piano lessons and a night lost in the forest, until a morning when the Gestapo comes to the school.
What really happened
Louis Malle based the film on his own childhood at the Petit Collège d'Avon, a Carmelite boarding school near Fontainebleau. Its headmaster, Father Jacques (Lucien Bunel), secretly enrolled three Jewish boys under false names, as thousands of Jewish children in France survived the war hidden in schools, convents and farms.
On 15 January 1944 the Gestapo raided the school, arrested the three boys and Father Jacques, and closed it. The boys were murdered at Auschwitz; Father Jacques died in June 1945, weeks after the liberation of Mauthausen. Yad Vashem recognized him as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985. Malle changed names and details but kept the ending he had witnessed at eleven.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Au revoir les enfants
- Directed by
- Louis Malle
- Countries
- France, Germany, Italy
- Languages
- French, German
- Released
- 1987
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Holocaust
- Home front
- True story
