Where is Anne Frank?
When I found out that Where is Anne Frank? will be released in Romanian cinemas, I rushed to become one of its first spectators. The reason I did so is predictable: it was due to my longstanding interest in the works of its creator, Ari Folman. The Israeli filmmaker’s name has become memorable for all cinephiles in search of new experiences back when, in 2008, the Cannes Film Festival opened with the astonishing Waltz With Bashir, a film that imposed the format of animation documentaries. A few months later, this self-reflexive film won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, thus rewarding the originality of this personal testimony of the author’s participation in the Lebanese War of 1982. Generated by his traumatic personal experience, Ari Folman (born in 1962) begins his investigation by noticing that he has lost his memories of his bloodied involvement in a battle that he didn’t really understand, at the very young age that he was drafted into the army. He admits to the fact that the film is rooted in his personal experience and thus from a subjective perspective. Waltz With Bashir recounts the handful of days in which Ari (now, a character) participated as a young recruit in the occupation of West Beirut, during the first Libyan War, and the events that transpired between the 16th and 17th of September 1982, when the army members that were guarding the Palestinian refugee camps allowed Christian Phalangists to storm the encampment and to massacre civilians. Although a state of confusion had gripped everything, an international committee put the moral blame for the devastation of West Beirut onto Israel, thus generating a sensation of guilt amongst its participants. Waltz With Bashir becomes a trip down memory lane, which destabilizes the convictions of his former brothers in arms, who were teenagers at the time of the massacre, and who were adults when the director was setting out on his investigation. Admitting to the fact that it’s a wholly autobiographical film, Ari Folman, a filmmaker who dabbled in documentaries and fiction films before (such as Comfortably Numb, 1991, which approached the First Gulf War and the fear that Israelis have for chemical weapons, Saint Clara, 1996, an adaptation of the eponymous novel written by Czech novelist Pavel Kohut, or Made in Israel, 1991, a futuristic tale about the search of the last Nazi left alive), he discovered animation in 2004, when he worked as a television director. He stated: “I was fascinated by the freedom that animation offered. I was tired of this endless search for sensational topics. I wanted to take a different look at documentaries and at animations, which are usually regarded as subjective creations, so I allowed myself to become free from traditional constraints.”1 This was the genesis of Waltz With Bashir – the hybridization of two apparently incompatible cinematic forms.
Dana Duma is a film critic and a scholar, currently teaching at the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest. Member of FIPRESCI and of the Romanian Film Critics Association, she is a regular contributor to mainstream and specialized film press in Romania and abroad and a frequent member of international festival juries. Director of “Film” magazine, she also published the books Self portraits of Cinema-1983, Gopo-1996, Benjamin Fondane cineaste-2010, Woody Allen,a Bufoon and a Philosopher-2005, The History of Romanian Animation 1920-2020 and Filmmakers in the Digital Era (both in 2020).
