We saw this in a Great Films group for retired university faculty, &c., and I found it very accurate and convincing of how some children will deal with severe loss. (I'm a retired clinical psychologist with quite a bit of experience working with orphans and foster children and I found it very convincing.) Children differ in their reactions to serious events; in this Paulette (age 5) loses her parents and her very dear pet dog to German planes strafing them as they're fleeing Paris early in WW-II. She soon meets an adopting friend, Michel (10), the son of peasant farmers in their rural area, and he gets his family to accept her. He's Catholic (she's not) and Michel teaches her how to say prayers and honor the dead, and together they bury her dead dog (which she'd been carrying) and they somewhat overcome her losses (and his strong need to have a young companion) by building a cemetery, ritually burying other animals, having funeral services (just the 2 of them), and finding (stealing) and putting up crosses on those graves. Very touching but never overdone, IMO. This won many awards including being understandably listed as one of Roger Ebert's "Great Films," an Oscar, et alia.