Waltz With Bashir, Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) Film Festival 2008, Czech Republic.

A subject that might, had it been made conventionally, have repped just another docu about a war atrocity, is transmuted via novel use of animation into something special, strange and peculiarly potent in “Waltz With Bashir.” Israeli helmer Ari Folman’s fourth feature spotlights a drawn version of Folman himself on a quest to remember what transpired during the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon where he served as a soldier. Although less immediately accessible than “Persepolis,” another mature-aud-skewed cartoon with which this is bound to be compared, “Bashir” could dance nimbly round arthouse niches offshore.

LESLIE FELPERIN