Institute History
Description
Au Revoir Les Enfants (Goodbye, Children) is inspired by the most tragic memory of my childhood. In 1944, I was eleven years old and boarding at a Catholic school near Fountainebleau. A new boy joined us at the beginning of the year. A brilliant student, he intrigued me. He was different, his background was mysterious. He didn't talk much the first few weeks. Little by little we became friends, when, one morning, our small world collapsed.
That morning in 1944 changed my life. It may have triggered my becoming a filmmaker. I should have made it the subject of my first film, but I preferred to wait. Time passed, the memory became more acute. In 1986, after almost ten years in the United States, I felt the moment had come and wrote the script of Au Revoir Les Enfants. Imagination used memory as a springboard, I reinvented the past in the pursuit of a haunting and timeless truth.
Through the eyes of Julien Quentin, a young boy with my background and temperament, I have tried to evoke his first friendship—brutally destroyed—and the discovery of the real world—its violence, its disorder, its prejudices. 1944 is far away, but I know that adolescents of today can share my emotions.