Some of the most memorable screen performances we’ve seen over the past year or so have been delivered by very young actors. Frankie Corio in Aftersun. Catherine Clinch in the Irish Gaelic language The Quiet Girl. Siblings Joséphine Sanz and Gabrielle Sanz, stars of Petite Maman.

One of the most remarkable, however, is that of Eden Dambrine in Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s utterly gripping and wrenchingly sad coming-of-age drama Close.

Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes 2022, Dhont’s portrait of a pre-adolescent friendship captures that fragile period when primary schoolers head to high school, when bonds between children who have grown up together are tested and frequently broken by new peer groups and emerging social pressures.

Gustave De Waele and Eden Dambrine in Close. Photo supplied.

Rémi (Dambrine) and Leo (Gustave De Waele) are best friends. They play together, dream together, are loved by their respective families. During sleepovers they share the same bed, peas in a pod.

But during their first days of high school, the untrammelled intimacy of their friendship is questioned by the other kids in class. “Are you together?” a girl asks. Rémi and Leo are momentarily dumbfounded....