Synopsis
An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.
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Cast
- Ari FolmanSelf (voice)
- Mickey LeonBoaz Rein-Buskila (voice)
- Ori SivanSelf (voice)
- Yehezkel LazarovCarmi Cna'an (voice)
- Ronny DayagSelf (voice)
- Shmuel FrenkelSelf (voice)
- Zahava SolomonSelf (voice)
- Ron Ben-YishaiSelf (voice)
- Dror HaraziSelf (voice)
Recommendations
- 100
Empire
A bravura documentary which balances the personal and the political as it peers into the First Lebanon War, its animated approach never feeling like a novelty. Astonishing, unforgettable: you have to see it. - 100
Los Angeles Times
Provocative, hallucinatory, incendiary, this devastating animated documentary is unlike any Israeli film you've seen. More than that, in its seamless mixing of the real and the surreal, the personal and the political, animation and live action, it's unlike any film you've seen, period. - 100
Wall Street Journal
An absolute stunner, a feature-length animated documentary, from Israel, in which the force of moving drawings amplifies eerily powerful accounts of war, shaky remembrance and rock-solid repression. - 90
Newsweek
The images of war that Folman and his chief illustrator, David Polonsky, conjure up have a feverish, infernal beauty. Dreams and reality jumble together. - 88
Rolling Stone
Get ready to be knocked for a loop. - 80
Variety
It's these surreal touches, deployed with tactical restraint, that make the picture extraordinary and convey the febrile atmosphere of warfare, where by fear, horror -- and later guilt -- distort and distend perception and memory. - 80
New York Daily News
This animated documentary, from former Israeli soldier Ari Folman, blends both tactics to devastating effect. Perhaps only animation could give us the distance that makes his subject bearable: the personal cost of his own participation in the 1982 Lebanon War. - 80
Village Voice
Ari Folman's broodingly original Waltz With Bashir -- one of the highlights of the last New York Film Festival -- is a documentary that seems only possible, not to mention bearable, as an animated feature.
