PERSONAL STORY: Ari Folman?s ?Waltz With Bashir? was well received at the Cannes Film Festival.

Director Ari Folman couldn’t take his plane back to Israel as planned. He had to stay longer at the Cannes Film Festival because of the intense interest in his animated documentary, “Waltz With Bashir.”

PERSONAL STORY: Ari Folman?s ?Waltz With Bashir? was well received at the Cannes Film Festival.

“It’s unbelievable to be here,” he told The Shmooze. “We had no clue where we were going with the movie.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Now one of the buzzed-about favorites for the Palme d’Or, Cannes’s top prize, “Waltz With Bashir” chronicles — in cartoon form — Israel’s 1982 war against Lebanon. The title refers to the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel, which led to the massacres in Sabra and Shatila.

“Waltz With Bashir” continues a Cannes trend that began last year with “Persepolis,” another work that highlighted the horrors of war through animation.

Folman embraced the idea years ago. “There is no other way to make the film,” he said.

Folman was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier during the 1982 conflict, and he said that his memories of it dissipated as the decades rolled by.

When a friend who was a veteran of the war kept having the same nightmare night after night, Folman decided to dig into his own subconscious, with the help of soldiers who fought with him. In the film, he travels the world to interview these soldiers while trying to reconstruct the true events of his own combat experience. But he said he didn’t want to tell the story by showing men in their 40s talking in front of a camera. Sketched moving images let him go much further, while providing an emotional buffer.

“I grew up in a private school in Haifa, disconnected from the Israeli society in many ways, and then I joined the army in a very rough unit,” he explained.

Beyond the magnificent images and music, Folman, the father of three young boys, said he is conveying a simple message: “All war is useless.”

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount