World Chess Champion Akiva Liebskind (Michel Piccoli) faces his former pupil Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who defected to the West from the Soviet Union five years earlier, for the World Chess Championship in Geneva, Switzerland. The tension and strategies between the players draw parallels to the political conflicts and ideologies between East and West during the Cold War.
France France Liechtenstein Liechtenstein Switzerland Switzerland
Michel Piccoli Alexandre Arbatt Liv Ullmann Leslie Caron Wojciech Pszoniak Jean-Hugues Anglade Daniel Olbrychski Hubert Saint-Macary Michel Aumont Pierre Michaël Serge Avédikian Pierre Vial Bernhard Wicki Jacques Boudet Benoît Régent Sylvie Granotier Albert Simono Marcel Tassimot Olivier Beer Jean-Paul Eydoux Jean-Philippe Guerand Piotr Kaminski Yaseen Khan Constantin Melnik Willy Nicoidsky Alain Rimoux Mathieu Schiffman Daniel Tixier John Van Der Bois Emmanuel Cohn Nurith Cohn
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Hoping to entrap Maria von Gall, who runs a courageous underground railroad for Jews in France, the Nazis kidnap her son Thomas, a brilliant 11-year-old chess master. An exchange arrangement goes awry and he sees her die in a hail of bullets; but he is rescued by his American father, whom he has never met before, and who plans to flee with him to Spain. However, Queen Maria had solemnly entrusted her little pawn Thomas with a precious secret and a terrifying mission, and it was time for him to move. A pawn may become an important piece by slowly, quietly advancing all the way through the enemy's ranks. Or a pawn may die trying. Retreat is what a pawn can never do.
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