Waltz with Bashir(2008)

Name: Waltz with Bashir
Director: Ari Folman
Released: 2008

dir. Ari Folman

A soldier animates what he cannot remember.

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Ari Folman, a veteran of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, realises he can't remember what he did there. He tracks down old comrades and asks them, and what comes back in their stories is the lead-up to the Sabra and Shatila massacre. He tells it as an animated documentary, in hallucinatory colour, with real interviews drawn over. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and won a Golden Globe.

Why it’s here

The film is about a country that can't remember what its soldiers did, and a man who goes looking. What's punk is that it comes from inside the army, with a veteran asking who gave the orders and who stood by. What's pedagogical is the form: animation makes memory's gaps visible, and the ending breaks the frame on purpose. Note: it is an Israeli perspective on a massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon, which is part of what it examines. It sits next to the Palestine titles in the catalog, such as Pity the Nation.

Where This Film Lives