WALTZ WITH BASHIR

(France , Germany , Israel, 2008, 87 mins)

35mm

Cast: Ari Folman, Ori Sivan, Roni Dayg, Shmuel Frenkel
Producers: Yael Nahlieli, Serge Lalou, Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul
Editor: Nilli Feller
Music: Max Richter
Art Director: David Polonskey
Director of Animation: Yoni Goodman
Sound Designer: Aviv Aldema

Beginning with unnerving images of a pack of dogs racing through the streets of Tel Aviv—an emblem of tormented conscience—writer-director and former Israeli soldier Ari Folman offers the most powerful statement yet about the agony of years of Middle East violence. Using at times otherworldly, atmospheric animation, Folman reconstructs a notorious atrocity that occurred in Palestinian refugee camps during the 1984 invasion of Lebanon, one that he witnessed but, for reasons he can't understand, cannot remember. Folman proves adept both as an investigative journalist and as a visual poet, delivering his story through the expressive, painterly animated frames. Dreams and black comedy gracefully enrich the facts he rigorously gathers, including eyewitness testimony from both his friends and comrades in arms and from military and political leaders. This documentary-style narration serves as a powerful counterpoint to the surreal, magical, insistently subjective drawn images: a man floating through the ocean nestled between the breasts of a naked woman, soldiers playing heavy-metal air guitar with their weapons as bullets fly past. WALTZ WITH BASHIR’s hybrid form becomes more than a skilled reconstruction of a tragedy. It is, like the masterpieces of Alan Resnais and Chris Marker, a universal meditation on the interaction of historical and personal memory. –Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival

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