Animated Documentaries

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

Ari Folman directed and wrote the documentary Waltz with Bashir, which follows Folmans personal experiences with his time serving in the war, and how his PTSD had caused him to wipe traumatic memories from his mind. During his time serving Folman had blocked out the massacre of 700-3000 refugees by christian phalangist gunmen. The film explores him slowly remembering and reliving his experiences of the war. Waltx with Bashir was filmed then animated, with no rotoscoping being involved with the production. The documentary was assisted by Autodesk maya which was used for turning points within the film. 

The documentary ends with jarring real life footage from the wat, which acts as a shocking wake up call to the viewer that the events actually occurred, which may have been slightly forgotten due to the animated nature of the film, where the viewer is confronted by the real life tragedy and injustices that occurred.

I don't believe that the animated portions of the film are a detractor, as it allows Folman to represent his experiences in an accurate way, and I feel it makes the story feel more genuine, where a re-enactment with live action I think may have come across as too Hollywood like, with unecessary flourishes and might have had more potential to deviate from the truth. However I do think addin the real footage at the end helps to highlight that, while a lot of the deaths and victims shown where animated, it didnt change the fact that these were real people being represented. I think the animation helps the film to stick out from many other documentaries, where people become desensitised to the realistic violence shown to them.

The animated documentary Tower (2016) follows the Texas University massacre of 1966

Production began in 2012, and the film had some trouble during production as the university was against the film staff being allowed on campus to shoot, so it was decided to make the documentrary animated. staff managed to get reference images, which had to be done covertly.
 The documentary starts with interviews of 20 survivors of the massacre, then makes use of rotoscoping actors, locations were added in after production.