Similarly to Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman’s celebrated animation, the semi-autobiographical Lebanon comes from a director attempting to assimilate the trauma of a conflict which left an indelible mark on an entire generation.
This wrenchingly powerful film, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, follows a group of young Israeli conscripts during the first days of the country’s 1982 war with Lebanon.
Utterly inexperienced and terrified by the prospect of killing or being killed, incapable of heroism, they are nevertheless assigned to operate a tank and clear a Lebanese village of PLO terrorists; a mission which leads to horrible chaos when it inevitably goes wrong.
Director Samuel Maoz wrote the script after 20 years of suffering the emotional fallout of his experiences; and Lebanon is the intensely affecting result – one which, like Waltz with Bashir – is testimony to the impossibility of ever successfully repressing the horror of war.