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Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

tomatometer

96

Average Rating: 8.4/10
Reviews Counted: 142
Fresh: 137 | Rotten: 5

A wholly innovative, original, and vital history lesson, with pioneering animation, Waltz With Bashir delivers its message about the Middle East in a mesmerizing fashion.

97

Average Rating: 8.4/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 34 | Rotten: 1

A wholly innovative, original, and vital history lesson, with pioneering animation, Waltz With Bashir delivers its message about the Middle East in a mesmerizing fashion.

audience

89

liked it
Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 41,102

My Rating

Movie Info

Director Ari Folman's animated, quasi-documentary Waltz With Bashir follows the filmmaker's emotional attempt to decipher the horrors that unfolded one night in September of 1982, when Christian militia members massacred more than 3,000 Palestinian refugees in the heart of Beirut as Israeli soldiers surrounded the area. Folman was one of those soldiers, but nearly 20 years after the fact, his memories of that night remain particularly hazy. After hearing an old friend recall a vivid nightmare in

Jun 23, 2009

$2.1M

Sony Pictures Classics

All Critics (142) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (144) | Rotten (5) | DVD (12)

Persepolis meets Full Metal Jacket in Ari Folman's powerful and original animated war film.

September 14, 2010 Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | Comment
Globe and Mail
Top Critic IconTop Critic

These depictions of the dementia of war have a hallucinatory power that can stand alongside those of Apocalypse Now.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Newsweek | Comment
Newsweek
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The message of the futility of war has rarely been painted with such bold strokes.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comment
TIME Magazine
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Special, strange and peculiarly potent.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
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The look of Waltz with Bashir is what is most arresting. It's a deep, multi-plane style of animation that incorporates photo-real settings, realistic renderings of the people and under-animated movement, especially of faces.

July 16, 2009 Full Review Source: Orlando Sentinel | Comment
Orlando Sentinel
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A wholly original and emotionally devastating animated documentary confessional.

February 20, 2009 Full Review Source: Detroit News | Comments (2)
Detroit News
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The flatness of the Flash animation keeps visual bombast to a minimum, even during surreal interludes.

February 17, 2012 Full Review Source: Time Out Chicago | Comment

Every scene fizzes and crackles with creative charisma as we are carried on an emotional journey of epic proportions.

March 24, 2011 Full Review Source: What Culture | Comment

Despite the director's refusal to come to terms with Israel's role in the Sabra-Shatila massacre, this is a pacifist film that ranks with "Platoon" and other classics.

October 6, 2010 Full Review Source: rec.arts.movies.reviews | Comment
rec.arts.movies.reviews

Waltz with Bashir uses vivid, hand-drawn animation to bring to life interviews Folman conducted with friends who were involved in the Lebanese war in the early 1980s.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Cinematical | Comment
Cinematical

[This] investigation into the dark regions of horror, culpability, and memory is all the more powerful because of his film's rueful hilarity.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Boston Phoenix | Comment
Boston Phoenix

As Folman makes peace with his past, he also makes a strong argument against war. Waltz with Bashir is a haunted and haunting film, one that resonates long after the final fadeout.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | Comment
Boxoffice Magazine

Folman's use of animation permits an audience to engage with the events, such as they are recalled, in a way that the simple testimony of those involved could not achieve.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Eye for Film | Comment
Eye for Film

Hay momentos de sobrecogedora belleza plástica y sonora (la música de Max Richter es excelente) y de aterradora significación...

February 10, 2010 Full Review Source: Uruguay Total | Comment
Uruguay Total

Visually striking, but there is a significant problem in that Folman and his fellow veterans are presented as victims rather than victimizers.

December 13, 2009 Full Review Source: EDGE Boston | Comment
EDGE Boston

Waltz With Bashir does what many films have done before; that is convinces us that war is hell, but it does so in way that is frightening and engaging in an entirely new way.

December 2, 2009 Full Review Source: Bangitout.com | Comment
Bangitout.com

Waltz is a challenging film in the best sense of the word. It asks questions about the nature of memory and life during a time of war without providing any pat answers.

August 30, 2009 Full Review Source: Washington Times | Comment

An arresting concept, yet the resulting film is skimpy, numbing, and less searching than it believes it is

August 26, 2009 Full Review Source: CinePassion | Comments (3)
CinePassion

While 'Waltz with Bashir' captures the specifics of the Lebanon campaign, there's something sadly universal about the tales that Folman and the other soldiers recount.

July 10, 2009 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
eFilmCritic.com

it feels like a fever dream, but moves forward with the churning internal logic and dogged persistence of a mystery-thriller

June 30, 2009 Full Review Source: Q Network Film Desk | Comment
Q Network Film Desk
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Waltz with Bashir

Waltz With Bashir is an animated documentary (possibly made out of guilt) that artfully accounts the filmmaker's forgotten, but haunting memory of the 1982 Lebanon War, Sabra and Shatila Massacre. Ugly history presented with irresistible creativity and charm. A strong and powerful work that explores the psychological

September 10, 2011
Jan Marc Macababayao

Super Reviewer

Lavish and innovative animation only strengthen what is a bold and hard hitting document of the atrocities of war and the toll conflict takes on the mindset of those thrust into the middle of it. A gorgeous and powerful work of art.

May 7, 2009
YLOWBSTARDreturns

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Waltz With Bashir (DE)
  • Waltz With Bashir (UK)
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