'Waltz With Bashir', an animated documentary from Israel has deservedly won the Best Documentary award. It is a juggernaut of a film, the most revealing war film ever made. It is Ari Folman's confessional account of what he experienced as a young soldier in 1982, the time when Israel invaded Lebanon.

Though there are long stretches of introspection in the film, violence permeates it and less is more here. An introspective (Animated) Folman, attempting to reconcile his time in Lebanon, his equally introspective fellow ex-Israeli soldiers, middle-aged and out of the army, who either cringe, cry or laugh nervously, the unimaginable horrors of warfare, as much as, the brilliant animation put this film in the category of unforgettable films.

The dramatic sequences reflect the hell that engulfs Folman, his fellow soldiers and the civil population of Lebanon , in particular the Palestinians massacred by Christian Phalangist forces in Beirut 's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Folman, as a 17-year old soldier, was on the outskirts of that 1982 massacre, but is not sure at the beginning of the film. It is only when a friend, also a veteran describes his nightmares full of menacing dogs from Lebanon that Folman begins to remember and bring up repressed memories. The faint outlines of the 20-year old bloodletting, all comes flooding back.

The film has a few funny moments amongst some of the flashbacks of some of their time in Lebanon , including their pre-war years, which propels the film along, without any stops along the way. 'Waltz with Bashir' is a surreal film, rather like Alice in Wonderland, a film that makes you think you are on a acid trip.

Though it narrates a particular period of history, it is a universal story and has a continuous impact on some survivors. We get to meet a soldier, who was a nerd in high school and to impress and prove his machismo to the girls, entered the army. We meet Bashir Gemayel , Lebanon 's idolised leader, whose murder sparks a brutal revenge assault against innocent men, women, and children. To remind us of the current conflagration in Gaza , familiar faces, now a part of history spring up at you, like Israel 's Ariel Sharon and Menachem Begin, together with strangers i. e. Palestinian boys, Phalangist militia, etc.

Whether, Folman's 'Waltz With Bashir' is an indictment of Israeli leaders or not, on the whole Israelis have embraced the film, the fact is Folman's is a bigger story than that. What he strives to tell us is, war impacts everyone involved, even those who decades later, seem to have all the superficial trappings of a successful life. Just like the Vietnam war, he tries to tell us that all those who have witnessed a war, years later continue to re-experience their traumas. The ugly scenes of war may have been repressed, but the trauma surfaces in many different ways.

'Waltz with Bashir' can be likened to Picasso's sprawling, shocking canvas of war painting i. e. ' Guernica ', which so shocked the public. Folman, who calls his film an 'animated documentary' found it therapeutic to make the film, and this instance of art imitating life in deeply disturbing while deeply entertaining way, is his gift to filmgoers worldwide.

An intense auto-biographical film, Folman, a 17-year-old Israeli soldier in 1982, at the time of the bloody massacres that took place in Lebanon 's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, twenty-five years later, is completely unable to come to terms with his complicity in the bloodshed. Unable to clearly recall his participation, 'Waltz with Bashir' is his quest to find out exactly happened, with this film he makes the wages of war, the suffering on sides, the obscenity that is war, come alive for us!