Waltz with Bashir

Some films are clearly character driven. Daughter from Danang, for example, is driven by the wants of its main character, Heidi Bub, who was born in Vietnam and given up for adoption. Raised in Tennessee and taught to deny her Asian heritage. Bub is now estranged from her adoptive mother. She sets the events of the film in motion when she decides to reunite with her birth mother. Similarly, in Waltz with Bashir, Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman sets events in motion when he decides to look back at a past he cannot remember. 

From Waltz with Bashir. Photo courtesy Bridget Folman Film Gang. 

As mentioned, the difference between plot- and character-driven films can be subtle, and one often has strong elements of the other. The characters in The Thin Blue Line are distinct and memorable the plot in both Daughter from Danang and Waltz with Bashir is strong and takes unexpected turns. It s also true that plenty of memorable documentaries are not "driven" at all in the Hollywood sense. When the... 

You and Laurence Klavan have two graphic novels coming out this year, both written for middle school children. They re fiction, but one, for example, is inspired by a real-life story, the discovery of a Nazi spy ring in New York City. For documentary filmmakers whose work is sometimes compared to creative nonfiction, or nonfiction novels, the graphic novel seems like another creative model—certainly as we saw with Ari Folman s Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary memoir. 

A lot of documentary work in the past few years—not only your work, but also Waltz with Bashir and Gonzo and other films—strikes me as pushing against the boundaries of the form while also striving to remain truthful. What is your take on the balance between creativity and truthfulness ... 

My issue with something is when it isn t true and you re trying to make it true, then that s wrong. But if you ve established something as best you can to be a fact or the truth, and you dramatize it or you visualize it in a certain way that isn t completely literal-minded, that s fine. Waltz with Bashir is a very good example. It s an extraordinarily good film—it s one of my favorite documentaries of the last decade—and I think it truly is a documentary because it s based on a series of collective and personal experiences of a very extraordinary moment in history, and the events themselves. That film seems to... 

Waltz with Bashir Produced by Ari Folman, Serge Lalou, Yael Nahlieli, Gerhard Geixner, and Roman Paul directed and written by Ari Folman ... 

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