Waltz with Bashir - 18 April 2010

Principal cast: Ari Folman, Ori Sivan, Roni Dayg, Shmuel Frenkel, Ron Ben Yisahi

Film notes: Waltz with Bashir (ואלס עם באשיר) may be classified as an animated drama or as an animated documentary. Director/writer/actor, Ari Folman (Saint Clara; tv series, In Treatment), served in the Israeli army in the Lebanon war of 1982, the year that Gemayel Bashir, Christian leader of Lebanon, was assassinated. The film draws upon the historical-realist tradition in European graphic novels. With the assistance of Art Director, David Polonsky, and Director of Animation, Yoni Goodman, Folman uses the techniques of animation (flash, classic, and 3-D) to represent the historical tragedy in which he took part, which he knows through nightmares and distorted individual memories (his own and those of others) more than through historical documents. The film is thus equally a representation of the struggle to remember the historical. As the narrator's voice says: "After the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, I lost my memory. Now in order to remember, I am looking for those who can never forget".

In documentary style, interviews with veterans of the invasion are central to the film—and here animation serves in part to protect the veterans' identities. Their oral recollections "dissolve" into graphic meditations upon the scenes of war as they were lived by the soldiers—including surreal and dark fantasy elements. With a particular focus on the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Phalangist fighters at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, following the assassination of Bashir, Waltz with Bashir poses the question of the responsibility of the individual Israeli soldiers who stood by.