Future Film - Vals Im Bashir

Mediterranean from Lebanon

On 16th October 2009 'Vals Im Bashir' director Ari Folman met with Wim Wenders in Berlin. The reason was to discuss Folman's film, the future of digital film, and the significance of Folman's animated documentary to the genre (which genre is a question still open, given the opposite ideas about fiction / documentary of both film makers).

That a established director like Wenders calls in a relative new director to praise his work in front of a nearly full auditorium was reason enough for the Israeli to come to Berlin.

After the mutual recognition introduction during which Folman confessed that his first work for the film school was to take apart the opening scene of 'Paris, Texas' (a 1984 Wender's film), Wenders started interrogating Folman about the gestation of the project and the way this comic-like animation was made. Of course the one reason that drove Folman to animation was the complete control of aesthetics and the flexibility that this offered him to shift from flashback to real life without losing credibility. The characteristic of this movie which most surprised Wenders is its reality and the capacity to reach one's soul that animated characters had. Folman explained that this was achieved through the exhaustive work, on a new technique mixing Flash and After Effects with classic sketch animation, that the always growing team of animators developed, each contributing with their style. This process took the gigantic effort of four years! Even though actors have lend their voices and "looks" to some of the characters, the spectator knows it is Folman who enquires about the Lebanon massacre which has faded with time in his memory... In the film, the interviewees seem to lack also accurate memories of that weekend. Under the aesthetic of the film lies a personal therapy that deals with memory and guilt, in other words the very old medicament of facing one's own ghosts to get over them.

If Folman has been redeemed after this picture is still to be seen, but for sure if a project deserved to be waited for as long as five years, was a personal one like this. The result is a tangible and magnificent portrait of a period of history which has been silenced for over twenty years. A ghost not only for the director but how many men and women, who like him, once stared impassive in front of a fearful injustice.