Waltz with Bashir

A former Israeli soldier realises he has no memory of his service during the 1982 Lebanon war, in particular the nights around the Sabra and Shatila massacre. In animated form he seeks out fellow veterans, a journalist and a psychologist, piecing together their dreams and testimony to reach the blank at the centre of his own recollection.

The film is a direct study of traumatic amnesia, of memory reconstructed through others when the self will not hold it, and of the guilt that lies under the gap. For a therapist it dramatises how the mind protects itself by forgetting and what it costs to remember. It was an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009.