Waltz with Bashir
Short description
Ari Folman is a filmmaker in Israel who has lost his memories of his service in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. When an old friend describes a recurring nightmare in which twenty-six dogs chase him every night, the two men connect the dream to their army days. Ari realizes he remembers almost nothing of that period, so he sets out to find former comrades around the world and question them about what they experienced. Their accounts gradually bring back images he had buried, including a night-time scene on a beach outside Beirut.
The film is an animated documentary, written and directed by Ari Folman, who also appears as himself. The voice cast includes Mickey Leon, Ori Sivan, Yehezkel Lazarov, Ronny Dayag and Shmuel Frenkel. It was produced by Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul and Serge Lalou, and came out in 2008, the second of the four features Folman has directed, between Saint Clara and The Congress.
Made for about two million dollars, it took roughly eleven million worldwide, a strong return for an animated documentary. Audiences rate it highly, with 8 out of 10 on IMDb from some 63,000 votes and 7.7 out of 10 on TMDB, while a critics' score of 8.7 out of 10 places it above both.
What's left behind the scenes
- Work on the film took 4 years.
- Together with a group of like-minded people, Ari Folman began collecting stories about the first three months of the 1982 Lebanese War. Based on the collected material, a 90-minute video film was made, which was then reworked into the animated film “Waltz with Bashir,” telling about the psychological trauma that the Lebanese War became for many Israeli soldiers. Folman raised money for production personally. When donations were insufficient, he took out a loan of one million shekels.
- In one of the episodes, at the 28th minute of the film, you can notice a GAZ-3102 (“Volga” car), which began mass production at the Gorky Automobile Plant in 1982, the same year the Lebanese War was taking place.
- This is the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best International Feature Film.
- The artist of the painting, David Polonsky, is right-handed, but he made most of the drawings for the film with his left hand so they wouldn't look "too beautiful".
- Despite a common misconception, rotoscoping (an animation technique where animators trace over live-action footage, frame by frame) was not used in the making of the film.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
