Today thanks a friend of mine I watched this beautiful animated movie Waltz with Bashir and what an amazingly well made movie. It's set in the times of the Lebanon Civil War and the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Directed by Ari Folman it's actually his true story. The characters in the movie are real people with whom Ari fought in the war. It talks about the post trauma disorder in a way because of the kind of memories that have been left on the characters in Ari's life. Depicted with animations which are more like comic strips and the use of dark colors, the mood of the film is very dark. It starts with one friend who comes to Ari talking about the nightmares he's been having and how they're related to the kind of things he'd done while being out at war. That sets the ball rolling in Ari's head where he's trying to piece together his role in the massacre, because although he has images of that, he does not recall anything to do with that day. He then travels to meet his friends and co-war veterans to try and understand how the story unfolded in reality. He has conversations with one friend after another, like a documentary film, each friend helping unlock certain episodes in his life. He also talks to a psychologist to understand the psyche behind his dreams and his nightmares. He talks to the journalist Ron Ben-Yishai who was the first journalist to reach the scene of the massacre. Slowly he pieces it together one-by-one and we are exposed to the reality of that day where nearly 3,000 - 5,000 innocent lives were massacred...
The movie ends with the animated part blending into the news footage of the massacre taken after the international journalists were allowed to enter. After reading a bit about the massacre, there was a ruling passed in the UN General Assembly of whether this massacre was genocide or not. It was voted as being genocide however many important nations were abstaining from casting their vote.
Watch this movie if you can.
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