Film short

Israeli TV documentarian Ari Folman uses graphic-novel-style animation to dramatize an inquiry into Israel’s 1982 military incursion into Lebanon, in which Folman himself was a soldier—and of which (at least as the movie begins) he has no memory. The dark center of the film is a massacre of Palestinian civilians carried out by Christian Phalangists under the noses (and some say with the cooperation) of Israel Defense Forces. But Folman’s is no simple fault-finding mission; rather, he’s probing at wounds that are still raw, though scabbed over by suppression, forgetfulness and avoidance. What do you remember, what do you not, and why? Folman uses his stark, noirish images as a way both to heighten the horrors of war and to screen us from them, like viewing a blinding explosion through a smoked mirror.