"Waltz with Bashir" speaks through the medium of animation and recollection. The memories of the soldiers are detailed as part interviews, part real depictions. The story starts with the nightmare of one soldier in which he is pursued by the dogs that he killed during the war. He explained that Israeli soldiers were instructed to shoot the dogs because they served to alert the Palestinians of the approach of Israeli troops.

The idea of memory is central to the movie—the loss of memory about the horrors of that invasion and the doubts about the reliability of the memories. One soldier describes fleeing a ship, carried away by a giant woman, another, describes rising out of the sea with fellow soldiers. The blurriness of the borderline between what is real and what is not, is stressed from the beginning of the movie and serves as a central motif throughout it.

These flights of unreality are intercut with the testimony of Israeli soldiers describing running into ambushes, and trying to capture resistant fighters. The movie, however, is centered on the memories of soldiers who witnessed the massacre at Sabra and Shatila , carried out by the Christian Phalangist under the protective wing of the Israeli army. One soldier, upon witnessing a whole family being executed by the Israeli allies, describes calling his superiors, only to receive the answer "we are aware of that, it's under control". Another soldier describes informing Ariel Sharon, then the defense ministry, of that massacre, to no avail. Read more

Waltz with history | Waltz with Bashir, epiphanies | laura on the left coast | Waltz with Bashir – feeling good about feeling bad