An Israeli director's dark journey to discover the truth about his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps is widely tipped to win an Oscar at next month's Academy Awards. Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary written and directed by Ari Folman, a former Israeli soldier, was nominated in the best foreign-language film category last Thursday and has been warmly reviewed around the world.
It has already won a Golden Globe, received several awards in Israel and been screened at Cannes. Folman was a 19-year-old soldier when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. In the film he returns to this hazy episode in his life after a discussion with a man in a bar who tells him about a nightmare in which he is being chased by a pack of snarling dogs, a metaphor for the war. Folman realises he has no memory of his role in the invasion and the film his journey across the bleak landscape of a forgotten war to track down old army comrades and piece together what happened.
The film has drawn particular praise for its original technique of being shot as a standard documentary with live figures then meticulously reconstructed as an animated film using stark, militaristic shades of orange, grey, black and green. The cartoon format allows Folman to blend stark images with surreal flights of fancy. In its final scenes the animation stops and real footage begins, some of it showing horrifying images of dead bodies.
Rolling Stone magazine praised the film's "hallucinatory brilliance in the service of understanding the psychic damage of war". The New York Times described it as a "memoir, a history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film." A reviewer in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote: "If I had to choose one Israeli film that represents Israeli cinema ... this is the film I would choose."
Despite such an overwhelming reception, the 90-minute film has yet to find a distributor in the Middle East. It is also not clear if it will be released in the UAE. A decision may come as soon as Monday, a source in the local film industry said yesterday. "It is a good film, everybody is waiting to find out if it will be released," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. At its heart are the massacres at the two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, carried out over three days in September 1982.
An official Israeli government inquiry into the massacre, the Kahan Commission, found a year later that the Israeli Defence Force was in control of the area surrounding the camp when Ariel Sharon, the defence minister at the time, gave approval for the Phalangists, a Lebanese Christian militia, to enter. Inside the militia took a brutal revenge on elderly men, women, and children for the assassination of its leader, President Bashir Gamayel. Estimates of the numbers killed vary from hundreds to 3,000.
Mr Sharon was found indirectly responsible for the massacre because he did not do enough to stop it. He was dismissed from his duties but was elected prime minister in 2001. "My film has a very strong anti-war declaration," Folman told the Reuters news agency, adding that he is among a minority of Israelis who opposed the recent military assault on the Gaza Strip. "If you are a believer in non-violence like me you ask yourself if everything is being done to prevent the next conflict and in this case I think, 'no'."
The source in Dubai said even if there were many requests from the public to show Waltz with Bashir in cinemas, it was doubtful the film would be a commercial success. "Look at Slumdog Millionaire," he said, referring to the Oscar-nominated film about an orphaned Indian boy who wins a quiz show, which opened last week. "It is a great film, but it is not doing as well as we expected. The market here is more interested in commercial movies, something that they don't want to dwell on too long. We promoted Slumdog really well but it was disappointing on the first night's release. Underworld, a horror thriller, did better."
Others said that clearer guidelines were needed about what was acceptable to show in cinemas. They pointed to the confusion over Persepolis, the award-winning 2007 film by Marjane Satrapi about growing up during the Iranian revolution, which was shown uncensored in a few cinemas but had its DVD release delayed because of its criticism of Islam. Nayla al Khaja, an Emirati film producer in Dubai, said: "I don't believe they have a clear policy towards what gets in and what doesn't. We don't have clear standards. But the film industry is brand new and it will take some time."
Waltz with Bashir will not be screened in Lebanon because of a boycott of Israeli products which the Lebanese information minister, Tarek Mitri, said was "absurd". He pointed out the film could be downloaded on YouTube. However, a small screening was held for 30 people in Beirut. Ninety showed up. Monika Borgmann, of Umam, an organisation which seeks to preserve and catalogue materials from Lebanon's violent conflicts, also criticised the Lebanese ban.
"It is a shame that a film critical of Israel is not allowed in Lebanon, especially as it covers a crucial period in history for Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis." Ms al Khaja said official censorship by government bodies was difficult to enforce. "Access to films is so much easier now because of online. If they start censoring it here and word gets out, it makes me want to see it more." hghafour@thenational.ae
* With files from AFP