As a 19-year-old conscript, Ari Folman was a soldier in the Israeli army when it invaded Lebanon in June 1982. Israel had taken its battle with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation into neighbouring Lebanon, where Palestinian fighters were sheltering. By September, despite a ceasefire, Israeli forces remained in Lebanon. Some of them were there to witness a massacre that took place that month in Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut.
The massacre was carried out by members a Lebanese Christian right-wing party to avenge the assassination of the country’s president, Bachir Gemayel. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians on the watch of an Israeli unit.
Folman had repressed memories of his deployment in Lebanon as well as the horrors of Sabra and Shatila. Waltz with Bashir is the Israeli filmmaker’s attempt to face his past. In the process, he reminds his country of its involvement with one of the worst attacks on civilians in recent history.
What makes Waltz with Bashir singular is its form. The film is an animated documentary that includes interviews with other soldiers in Folman’s unit, recreated sequences of the Lebanon War, and dream sequences. Animation proves to be a perfect choice to depict the surrealist nature of Folman’s experiences, his guilt over what…
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