Waltz with Bashir (2008) (with Bella Honess Roe)

Episode 24 takes a walk through the terrain of animated documentary, with Chris and Alex joined by Dr Bella Honess Roe (Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Film Studies, University of Surrey) to discuss the relationship between truth, authenticity and animation in Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008). Documenting his own personalised account of the Lebanon war, Folman’s feature film provides a useful test case to think about how fantasy and animation might be applied within a non-fiction context. Topics for discussion include the ability of animation to represent trauma (including its depiction of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre); the veracity of animating dreams and memory; and the medium’s veiling properties as a mode of historical or personal distraction. The result is both the framing of Waltz with Bashir as a crucible moment that reignited scholarly interest in animated documentary, and a reflection on how Folman’s film crystallises memory as itself as a combination of the factual and fantastical.