Sightlines · reception
How Waltz with Bashir was received
2008 · Ari Folman · Waltz with Bashir on Sightlines
The arc
A Cannes-competition sensation in 2008 and instant critical darling, it won the Golden Globe only to lose the Foreign Language Oscar to Departures — still cited as one of the category's great upsets. Nearly two decades on it remains the benchmark 'animated documentary,' though it's now debated as much as it's admired.
What’s debated
The perennial fight is whether it's a searing act of reckoning or a textbook case of 'shooting and crying' — centering the soldier's trauma while the war's actual victims stay at the margins.
Its footprint
The image of soldiers wading out of the sea under sickly yellow flares became one of the era's most reproduced movie images, and its title sequence of rampaging dogs is a frequent 'greatest opening scenes' pick. Alongside Persepolis, it made serious animation-for-adults a respectable arthouse category.
Where it stands
Canon, not cult: the 'you must have seen this' entry for animated documentary, and a fixture on best-of-the-2000s lists.
Did you know? The film is banned in Lebanon, where much of it is set — but it was famously shown anyway at a private, unofficial screening in Beirut in early 2009.
Named by the director
- Apocalypse Now (1979) — Folman acknowledged Coppola's hallucinatory war epic as a touchstone, and the film openly nods to it in a beachside surfing sequence.