The Israeli "Oscars", called the "Ophir" prizes (in memory of Shaike Ophir), were awarded this week at a ceremony in Tel Aviv.
The biggest winner is Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir, which won the two important awards for best film and best direction. In addition, it received awards for screenplay, soundtrack, artistic design and editing. The film is not a feature film in the traditional sense. It is a full-length, animated, documentary film, which attempts to be therapeutic in its dealing with issues and nightmares that have been buried by Israeli soldiers for too long.
For more background and my analysis of the film, see my posting of July 27th below.
1 comment:
Waltz with Bashir kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire film. It never let me get comfortable. I realized that the film, actually a documentary in the guise of a cartoon, perhaps a docutoon, was delving into a discussion we've never had before - what happens to good men (and now, to good women too) during wartime -- when they see things they believe could not really be happening in a rational world. The answer: they dissociate, they 'forget', they suppress. And then they get sick from it all, twenty or more years later. And the greater question is what happens to a good nation when it becomes complicit (despite all the government sponsored committee findings to the contrary)in bad things it never believed could really be happening in a rational world. The film takes on these parallel issues, grabs you by the throat and never lets go. If you can't find it playing in a theatre near you, rent it. You must see it to understand nations at war and the men and women who execute war.
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