Waltz With Bashir

These are my notes for last Sunday's screening:


Waltz With Bashir

Israel 2008 (90 minutes)

Director: Ari Folman

Starring: David Proud, Dominic Coleman, Jason Maza, Robyn Frampton and Sasha Hardway

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for an Oscar (Best Foreign Language Film)

• Nominated for two BAFTAs (Best Foreign Language Film and Best Animated Film)

• Nominated for Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival

• A further 20 nominations and 26 wins


In 2006 Ari Folman meets a friend with whom he had served in the Israel Defence Force (IDF) 14 years earlier. His friend has nightmares linked to his experiences during the Lebanon War, but Folman is surprised that he cannot remember anything from that period. Later that night Folman has a vision from the night of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but he cannot tell if it is true. A friend advises Folman to discuss his vision with other people were in the IDF at the same time in order to understand what happened and to revive his own memories.

Folman spent four years making his film. It started as a live-action documentary with interviews and newsreel footage, and then the production team turned it into an animated film using rotoscope animation techniques. The resulting effect looks like one long hallucination and is perfect for the trauma of Folman’s recovered memories. Only at the end does Folman revert to actual footage depicting the victims of the massacre, with devastating effect.

The atrocities are comparable with those on the Eastern Front during the Second World War that form part of the Holocaust, but reports from witnesses within Europe go unheeded. Finally the slaughter end only when an Israeli general intervenes, and it is at this point that the film transforms from animation into newsreel.

As Philip French noted in his review, the subsequent inquiry into the massacres found Ariel Sharon guilty of gross neglect of duty and ordered that he should never again serve as Defence Minister, but twenty years later he became prime minister. However he also notes that an Arab country would not have established a similar enquiry nor would it have allowed a film like Waltz With Bashir to be made.