Movie · 2008 · Animation, Documentary, Drama, War · 1h 30m · R · HE
Curator score: 9.0/10 (119K ratings)
One man's journey to uncover his past.
Overview
An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.0/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 4.00/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%
Metacritic: 91
TMDB: 7.7/10
Director
Ari Folman
Production
Les Films d'Ici, Razor Film Produktion, ITVS International, ARTE, Bridgit Folman Film Gang
Cast
Ari Folman, Mickey Leon, Ori Sivan, Yehezkel Lazarov, Ronny Dayag, Shmuel Frenkel, Zahava Solomon, Ron Ben-Yishai, Dror Harazi
Curator Review
Verdict
A formally inventive, haunting war-memory film that uses animation to make trauma, guilt, and repression feel tactile. It is powerful for viewers open to morally complicated nonfiction storytelling, though its political framing has drawn serious criticism and can be hard to separate from the film’s emotional force.
Best for
adult viewers interested in war memory and psychological trauma
fans of animated documentaries and experimental nonfiction
viewers drawn to politically charged, morally ambiguous cinema
people who appreciate visual storytelling that externalizes memory and dream logic
Skip if
you want a straightforward historical documentary with a neutral stance
you are sensitive to films about war crimes and civilian massacres
you dislike subjective, self-interrogating narration
you prefer animation only when it is light, fantastical, or family-oriented
Overview
Ari Folman’s film is one of the most striking uses of animation in nonfiction cinema, turning recollection into something unstable, haunted, and deeply visual. The drifting, dreamlike images give shape to memory gaps, survivor guilt, and the way trauma returns in fragments rather than clean facts.
Worth noting
As a war film, it is less interested in battlefield action than in the afterlife of violence: interviews, flashbacks, nightmares, and the uneasy work of piecing together what was seen, done, and repressed. That approach makes it gripping and formally distinctive, even when the film’s self-exculpating perspective leaves a bitter aftertaste for many viewers.
Bottom line
The result is emotionally potent and aesthetically memorable, but also contentious. It rewards viewers who are willing to sit with ambiguity, and it can frustrate those looking for a more direct confrontation with responsibility and historical atrocity.
Top Letterboxd reviews
natalope (2★) · 1526 likes
Uhhhh...definitely paints a WAY TOO sympathetic image of the IDF, making it seem like they had no hand in the massacres of Palestinian people in Lebanon refugee camps. The animation and style were interesting but I could not get passed the whole “the IDF had PTSD too don’t you feel bad for them?” FREE PALESTINE
Youssef ✨ (1★) · 1277 likes
Oh no the poor IDF soldiers have PTSD from knowingly participating in a massacre against civilians :( maybe if they were tried and punished for their crimes they would feel better :D
As someone mentioned it’s like if a Nazi made a movie trying to get you to sympathise with him because of the PTSD he got from the concentration camps, then proceeded to absolve himself of guilt because he was only a guard and didn’t directly take part in the killing he knew was going on inside.
1 star for cool animation / soundtrack
My Cinematic Travels
Rethaam · 824 likes
The regret and guilt ur feelin..aint enough
Séamus Malekafzali (2★) · 507 likes
A film that advertises itself as a confrontation with Israel's past atrocities but is actually an attempt at exoneration. Even though Ari Folman acknowledges that he was with the soldiers firing flares into the air to aid the Falangists in committing the Sabra and Shatila massacre, it is the fact that he is able to remember what exactly happened and that he personally didn't kill any civilian that is supposed to be the story's catharsis.
I can't help but be… more
G. (0.5★) · 476 likes
Imagine German people making a movie about concentration camps just to make you sympathise with the Nazi soldiers because :( murder gave them PTSD :(
the soundtrack is rad tho