Waltz with Bashir is based on Ari Folman's experiences as a young Israeli Defense Force solider on duty in a Beirut refugee camp during a massacre. All images © 2008, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

In 1982, Ari Folman was a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces on duty in Lebanon, part of the army occupying Israel's neighbor during that country's ongoing civil war. Only 19 at the time, Folman and his unit were stationed on the outskirts of Beirut's Sabra-Shatila refugee camp -- while inside, a Lebanese faction was taking bloody revenge on the camp's Palestinian residents for the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the faction's leader. The massacre took the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of Palestinians.

In its aftermath, several Israeli leaders were accused of looking the other way and allowing the massacre to take place. Ultimately, Israel's defense minister was forced to resign -- a disgrace that did not prevent him from becoming the country's prime minister 20 years later.

Folman and his army friends went on with their lives; Folman entered Israel's entertainment industry, writing and directing films and TV shows, including Be Tipul, a dramatic series that would be remade in the U.S. as HBO's In Treatment.

Years later, Folman reunited with one of his fellow soldiers. The man described a recurring dream of being pursued by a pack of bloodthirsty dogs. The two realized neither could remember the details of their time in Beirut -- and that the friend's dream of dogs was connected to whatever they had witnessed in 1982.

Just as several other contemporary documentarians have done, Folman set out on a quest for the truth, with himself on camera as the protagonist. However, unlike others, Folman turned to animation, the most unreal form of filmmaking -- but one perfectly suited to fill in the missing pieces of an emotional jigsaw puzzle. The result is Waltz with Bashir, a Citizen Kane-style recounting of Folman's search and what he discovered. The animated feature is replete with phantasmagorical imagery and surreal dream sequences; the film opens with an unsettling depiction of his friend's canine nightmare. The movie's overall look and feel is dreamlike in its own right, thanks to a unique combination of conventional, Flash and CG animation together with a carefully chosen color palette and bold character design. For the first time, two Israeli animated features have qualified for Oscar consideration in the same year: Waltz with Bashir and $9.99. And thanks to strong critical buzz, Folman's film stands a good chance of getting nominated.

Today Folman is a handsome 45-year-old with a salt and pepper beard. In appearance he resembles the The Hunt for Red October-era Sean Connery, far removed from the gangly teenager he depicts himself as in Waltz's many flashbacks to wartime Beirut. In voice, however, his Israeli accent and Hebrew-influenced sentence constructions give his speech a poetic quality and make him sound almost like a Talmudic scholar. It's an impression intensified by Folman's wide-ranging curiosity, exemplified by the many questions he directed at me about my own interests and opinions during our recent conversation...

Graphic novels and not animation is the inspiration behind Bashir's visual style.

Ari Folman: If we only talk about animation, I'm happy.

Joe Strike: I'm sure we'll talk about the film's politics as well, but for now let's start with the animation. What was your inspiration for the film's visual style?

AF: Graphic novels, many graphic novels -- not animation.

JS: Any ones in particular?

AF: Joe Sacco's Palestine, [The Fixer: A Story from] Sarajevo and anything we could put our hands on. Some French graphic novelists did work in Afghanistan, journalistic coverage in graphic novels. It's not Watchmen.

JS: The production notes say the film is a combination of 2D, Flash and CGI; how did you mesh these separate techniques?

AF: The movie is basically done in Flash. We took the cutout look to the extreme. You can't make any progress in Flash within the software. During production I realized slow movement is our biggest downside. A person walking slowly from the door to this chair is much more difficult in terms of how it looks in the end, compared to big tanks, fighting scenes where everything moves very fast and there's a lot of sound around too.

We tried to put as much as we could in the budget for classic animation. Sometimes you'd see someone walking and just the lower part of their legs would be in classic animation.