Just like their adult counterparts, a leading performance from a child actor can make or break a film. And it can be notoriously difficult to wrest a great performance from someone who might be staring goggle-eyed at the camera, picking their nose, or crying for their mom. For whatever reason, it can be even more painfully obvious when a child is miscast than with an adult, you find your eye irresistibly drawn to every miscue.
We can all think of a number of English language films with a standout child actor or two: Anna Paquin in The Piano, Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, Quevenshané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild, Henry Thomas in E.T., Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun. International films have historically thrown child actors a little more consistently into deeper emotional waters than their American counterparts, for better or for worse. Here’s a list of fifteen of the best child performances in a foreign film, see how they stack up!
15 Brigitte Fossey - Forbidden Games
This 1952 French film (originally Jeux Interdits) really hinges on the performances of its two child leads, Brigitte Fossey and Georges Poujouly, as Pauline and Michel, a city girl and a country boy left largely to their own devices during WWII, grappling with concepts of life and death, with no adults who have the time to explain. Both children are outstanding (playing a five and a ten-year-old, respectively), but as critic David Ehrenstein wrote, “Fossey’s is quite simply one of the most uncanny pieces of acting ever attempted by a youngster.“ Hers is an utterly pure and heartbreaking performance as one of the youngest victims of war. Fossey has enjoyed a successful career ever since, even starring in Robert Altman’s Quintet as Paul Newman’s wife.
14 Victoire Thivisol - Ponette
Maybe there’s just something about very young French actresses? Four-year-old (yes, four-year-old) Victoire Thivisol won the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her portrayal of the title character, an only child who has just lost her mother in a car accident that left her with a broken arm. Ponette may not have a war to contend with as in the previous film, but death is a foreign concept to her, but one she is forced to wrap her mind around. Not an expression of Thivisol’s is anything other than genuine, a credit to the director Jacques Doillon. To date, though, the young actress has only appeared in four further films.
13 Gaspard Maness and Raphaël Fejtö - Au revoir les enfants
This 1987 historical French classic is based on events witnessed by director Louis Malle as a child during WWII, which resulted in his Catholic boarding school being raided, and five individuals sent to concentration camps: three Jewish students, one Jewish teacher, and the Catholic priest and headmaster who had bravely hid them at the school. All five perished. Gaspard Maness and Raphaël Fejtö play Julien and Jean, two boys whose initially antagonistic relationship turns to a close friendship when Julien learns of Jean’s secret identity. Both boys are excellent, trying to hold onto childhood while the world of adults subsumes theirs. It isn’t a film about grand heroic moments, but whispers in the dark, and shared expressions between friends. After the film, Manesse turned his attentions to composing. Fejtö made a few more films, but ultimately became an author and illustrator of children’s books, collaborating with his mother.
12 Ana Torrent - Spirit of the Beehive
You can’t overstate the effect Ana Torrent has on a film. Only seven in this movie, her tiny frame, pixie haircut, and huge dark eyes are at the center of the 1973 film set at the end of the Spanish Civil War. She is obsessed with the movie Frankenstein, and when she happens upon a fugitive republican soldier, rather than being afraid or turning him in, she feeds and cares for him. Dan Callahan wrote, “Torrent, with her severe, beautiful little face, provides an eerily unflappable presence… The one time she smiles, it’s like a small miracle”. If you are enchanted by this performance, you can also see Torrent three years later in another tender role in Cria Cuervos. She is still acting today, with credits that include an appearance as Catherine of Aragon in 2008’s The Other Boleyn Girl.
11 Andrei Khalimon - Kolya
It could be the set-up for a bad comedy, a fancy-free bachelor suddenly saddled with a five-year-old, but the 1996 Czech drama ends up being quite moving. The title character is sweetly played by Andrei Khalimon, the son of a Soviet woman in a marriage of convenience to a rakish musician. In the political upheaval of the late '80s, the woman must leave Kolya behind to be cared for by the musician. Initially quite wary of each other (and lacking a common language) they end up forming a transformative bond. Khalimon won a Czech Lion award for his supporting role, but chose not to pursue a further career in acting.
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10 Nadezhda Mikhalkova - Burnt by the Sun
Can a director get a better performance out of his lead actress if his lead actor is his six-year-old daughter? It certainly can’t hurt, and in this Russian period piece, Nikita Mikhalkov also plays Nadezhda Mikhalkova’s on-screen father, and scenes between the two of them are especially poignant. The plot, involving both political and romantic betrayals, is seen through the eyes of the charming and mischievous Nadia, as what was once a halcyon, bucolic life for their family descends into a Stalinist nightmare. When the film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1995, Mikhalkova came up on stage to accept the award with her father. It continues to be a family business, as Mikhalkova and two of her siblings have all continued to appear in films with their father.
9 Salvatore Cascio, Cinema Paradiso
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more charming child actor than Salvatore Cascio as Toto in 1988’s smash Italian hit Cinema Paradiso. He’s a scrawny little imp obsessed with movies, forever worming his way into the local cinema to devour any film that he can, to the constant distress of the projector, played by Philippe Noiret. It turns out to be their friendship as much as Toto’s love for movies that predicts the course of his life thereafter. The movie is a beautiful tribute to what the movies can mean to us, and Toto a lovely expression of the joy and wonder of childhood. Cascio has continued to act as an adult.
8 Subir Banerjee - Pather Panchali
Pather Panchali was Satyajit Ray’s 1955 debut film, and remains one of his most famous. A key to its success was undoubtedly the casting of Subir Banerjee, a non-professional cannily spotted by Ray’s wife, when auditions were proving disappointing, to play the lead role of Apu. The story focuses on the adventures and misadventures of Apu and his sister Durga, living in rural Bengal in the early part of the 20th century. Only eight years old when filming began, Banerjee grew up before the camera in the three years that production took. Ray was influenced by Italian neorealism, and Banerjee provided a perfect lens through which to tell Apu’s tale.
7 Jean-Pierre Léaud, The 400 Blows
François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is considered one of the all-time great French films, and it launched Jean-Pierre Léaud into stardom. Antoine Doinel was loosely based on Truffaut himself, and audiences watched the 14-year-old Léaud grow up in Paris, struggling with the restrictions of parents, school, and society. The performance was so effective that Truffaut cast him as Antoine in five subsequent films, and Truffaut ended up taking the often-troubled Léaud under his wing on and off the film set. Léaud is still considered a significant figure of the French New Wave.
6 Lina Leandersson - Let the Right One In
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11-year-old Lina Leandersson didn’t know she was auditioning for a role as a centuries-old vampire when she tried out for a part listed as “a 12-year-old boy or girl, good at running.” Luckily she soon got used to the idea, and looked and acted the part to perfection. Interestingly, her voice was deemed too high and feminine to play what had become an androgynous role, and her lines ended up being dubbed. But her pale gothic sadness fit Eli to a T. Let the Right One In has been her biggest film to date.
5 Catherine Demongoet, Zazie dans le Métro
Louis Malle had a knack for getting wonderfully natural performances from his child actors, and his 1960 film Zazie dans le Métro is no exception. Catherine Demongoet played the precocious, pixieish Zazie, a ten-year-old who has been unceremoniously dumped on her uncle while her mother steps out with a lover. She’s a gap-toothed, boyish scamp with a fondness for swearing and a penchant for naughtiness, who gets a taste of grownup life with run-ins with the police, metro strikes, and a brawl at a drag show. Show business turned out not to be for Demongoet, though, and she eventually became a teacher instead.
4 Catherine Clinch - The Quiet Girl
If you’ve seen the 2022 Irish language film The Quiet Girl, it will probably surprise you that this is lead actress Catherine Clinch’s first time on screen, with a remarkable performance. As a child who is sent away from her growing family, too poor and disinterested to maintain her care, she’s thrown into a new life with unfamiliar cousins in the country. She’s a child without choices, and the Independent commented: “The essence of Cait’s fascination as a character is how much she watches, how little she says. But all the time, you can see her thinking.” Whether or not she sticks to Irish language films, it will be interesting to see where young Clinch’s career goes from here.
3 Kim Sae-ron - The Man From Nowhere
South Korea’s most successful film of 2010 told the story of a dark and enigmatic man who embarks on a journey of violent revenge when his only real friend, the child of a drug-addled neighbor, is kidnapped. The child is So-Mi, played by Kim Sae-ron, a neglected ragamuffin who can’t help but tug at your heartstrings. Her little heart-shaped face tempers the extreme violence of the film, and gives the main character a reason for all that he does. Kim Sae-ron has gone on to enjoy continued success with her acting, although at last report, she had still not actually seen The Man from Nowhere.
2 Charlotte Gainsbourg - L’effrontée
She's the most famous name on our list, and you probably know already about Charlotte Gainsbourg’s storied career. The daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, she is a multi-award winning actress and singer and has starred in numerous French and English language films, including a number directed by Lars von Trier. She got her first César award at the tender age of 14 for her role as Charlotte in L’effrontée, a girl ready to grow up as fast as she can. It’s an awkward, honest portrayal of an adolescent in flux, trying to be older before her time, playing up to a girl she admires, cruel to her only friend, a frail, bespectacled girl who adores her. If you enjoy it, make sure to look up Gainsbourg’s adorable, gasping acceptance of her César award.
1 Jonathan Chang, Yi-Yi
When Jonathan Chang auditioned for Edward Yang’s acclaimed film Yi-Yi, he was only eight years old, younger than the role required. Yang took a chance, and it paid off brilliantly, because Chang as Yang-Yang is really the thread that ties this beautiful family drama together. He’s too young for it to really be a coming-of-age film, but you really get to see the story through the eyes of this little boy, watching the grown-up world that he will someday inherit. He’s only appeared in a few films since then, none with the stratospheric success of Yi-Yi.