Middle East News
Waltz with Bashir recounts Israel Lebanon nightmare (Roundup)
By DPA
May 15, 2008, 15:36 GMT

Cannes - At the start of Israeli director Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir a middle-aged man recounts how he is haunted by a recurring nightmare about a group of fierce dogs charging through a city who eventually end up snarling and baying outside his apartment building.

'They come to kill,' the man explains to his old friend during a conversation over a drink in a bar.

In fact, the nightmare he talks about is that nightmare suffered by a whole generation of Israeli soldiers caught up in the first Lebanon War.

And in particular, the horrific events surrounding the 1982 massacre by Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen of thousands of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps which at the time were surrounded by the Israeli army.

Partly autobiographical, Folman sets out in his film to tell the story of those Israeli soldiers, their traumas and their memories of the massacre which triggered widespread international condemnation at the time.

Indeed, 45-year-old Folman is the old friend in the bar at the start of the film with his movie in a sense representing a new groundbreaking documentary style using animation to tell the story and portray those being interviewed.

'Common solders are always pawns in the game played by leaderships,' said Folman. 'That was what I was interested in.'

He was speaking at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival ahead of the film's premiere at the world's leading film fest with his movie due to be released in Israel next month.

There is also a chance that Folman's film might be shown in the Arab world with an expression of interest from Dubai and the producers considering whether to screen the movie at the Dubai Film Festival.

Showing the film in the Arab world would be 'the most amazing thing' said Folman. 'I can't imagine it. I hope it will happen,' he said.

Folman said his mission to making the movie was not to conduct an investigation into the massacre or the role played by the Israeli army.

'I was interested in the massacre ... in assembling the facts and putting them into one clear picture,' Folman said. 'People were being slaughtered. It is always about this: when did you realize what was going on? '

The film, he said, was always meant to be animated. Folman, who only began to delve into his experiences as an Israeli soldier in Lebanon five years ago when he reached 40, sees his movie as about memory loss, the repression of memory and the subconscious.

Moreover, he also draws on the horrors and nightmares perpetuated by Nazi Germany to tell his more contemporary story of the trauma of camps and terrible massacres.

The release of Folman's Waltz with Bashir coincides with events marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. But Folman says that it was only by chance that his film will be screened in cinemas across Israel this year.

However, Israeli movie makers have in recent years become loud voices in expressing their opposition to the Middle East conflict and the terror that forms much of daily life in their country with a recent wave of anti-war films emerging from the nation.

Nevertheless, Folman is optimistic about the prospects for a final peace settlement in the Middle East.

'You have to be optimistic when you make this type of film,' he said. 'We don't have the right leadership in both parties, but when we have the right leadership we will have change,' he said.