VALZER WITH BASHIR

The film by Israeli director Ari Folman tells the sad experience of young soldiers during the Lebanon conflict in the early 80s. The graphic style used in the animated feature film by Bridgit Folman Film Gang is more similar to the classic comics of the 70s, than to that of the traditional cartoon and highlights both the drama of the nocturnal chiroscuro, and the surreal and dreamlike scenes of the protagonists.
The film begins with a pack of black dogs, which burst onto the scene, wreaking havoc and destruction. This is the nightmare that haunts an old friend of Ari Folman every night, after his participation in the Lebanon war, despite more than 25 years have passed. The film tries to investigate the most hidden corners of the human psyche, involved in traumatic experiences and to provide logical explanations. Thus we understand that Ari Folman's friend, during the war, had the task of killing the dogs of the enemy village, to prevent them from revealing their presence during the night attacks. In the dialogue between the two in a bar, the director realizes that he remembers practically nothing, of those dramatic events that have marked his life and that of his peers enlisted on the front, so he decides to talk to each of them tie the events together, to try to understand if he is guilty of some serious fault. At the same time, some chilling and poetic testimonies emerge, where the soldiers involved alternated in the role of victims and executioners, almost unaware and unaware of what they were doing. So in their memories often the dream and the liberating visions take over, from that horrible reality from which they wanted to escape, where every short and small escape was seen as a sweet and heavenly sensation. In a typically 80s context, between punk music and nationalist propaganda songs, those young people witnessed the massacre of 3000 Palestinian civilians, perpetrated by the Christian-Maronite armed Falange in the villages of Sabra and Chatila, with an indifferent defense minister Ariel Sharon at the time. to the serious crisis. Just as the heavy tank crushes everything that hinders its passage, like cars and walls, so too war crushes human values ​​and everyone finds themselves involved in cynical and cowardly facts and attitudes, in order to save themselves from the horror that surrounds them. Thus Ari Folman will remember his comrade-in-arms who with a mad gesture snatches the machine gun from his hands and exposes himself to the snipers' target, shooting wildly, at the waltz pace. On the scene and on all the walls of the city, stands the face of Bashir Gemayel, the Lebanese leader who was killed in an attack before becoming president.
The film won Los Angeles, the prestigious Golden Globe for best foreign film.

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Waltz with Bashir is copyright Bridgit Folman Film Gang, Les Films d'Ici, Razor Film Produktion GmbH, Lucky red and are used here exclusively for cognitive and informative purposes.