Cannes, FRANCE (AFP)
Repressed memories, the horrors of war and Israel's dubious role in a notorious Beirut refugee camp massacre are the themes of the Cannes film festival's first ever fully-animated documentary called "Waltz With Bashir".
The film is a gripping story about ex-soldiers who have repressed horrific memories of their time in the Israeli army. The filmmaker is Ari Folman who is an ex-soldier and was present during the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli-backed Christian milita in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.
The animation opens with thumping rock music as snarling dogs hurtle through city streets, the highly personal tale recounts the director's quest to fill the holes in his memory of his stint as a 19-year-old conscript in Israel's army.
He was baffled by why he couldn't remember much of his role in Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the 1982 massacre.
So Folman, a longtime documentary filmmaker in Israel, tracks down nine people who were either with him at the time or were involved in the events, and then slowly pieces together his own actions.
He then wrote a narrative script and got artists to transform the interviews into animation.
"There was no other way to do it," he told reporters here. "Otherwise it would have been pictures of middle-aged men going on about stories that happened 20 years ago."
The result is a visually and emotionally gripping tale that brings to life harrowing and sometimes surreal memories of death, guilt and regret. |
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Collective amnesia Folman said that after he returned from his service in the army he blocked out the whole experience and believes Israel suffers from "collective amnesia".
"A world expert on post-trauma I interviewed in the film told me that in Israel there are thousands of walking bombs," Folman said, saying the country was suffering from a "collective amnesia."
"People, ex-soldiers who can live their lives, nothing happening, everything's cool, but one day they could just burst out and you will never know what will happen," he said.
In the final 50 seconds of the film it ditches animation in favor of gruesome newsreel footage showing massacre victims' bodies piled up in courtyards and alleyways and wailing mourners wandering among the carnage.
These images, when first shown after the massacre, caused outrage and protests across the world, including in Israel.
Folman said he decided to use the newsreel because he didn't want viewers coming out thinking they had seen a "cool, animated movie with cool drawings and music."
"Thousands were killed. Sometimes you have to get it in the face. The massacre happened and you have to see it," he said.
The wider context of Israel's war in Lebanon is not dealt with in the film, but Folman's movie is a clear condemnation of the country's military and political conduct.
When the Christian militia moved into the refugee camps, vowing to weed out "terrorists," Israeli forces were positioned -- among them Ari Folman -- on the edges of the camps, taking no action whatsoever to stop what was clearly a prolonged massacre of civilians -- mainly women, children and elderly.
Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defense minister, was informed of what was going on but did nothing to stop it. |
