Oscars Doc or Not: Waltz With Bashir and The Class

This year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscars nominees include two brilliantly concieved movies that bridge the narrative and documentary genres in highly unusual ways.

Waltz With Bashir is Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman's almost entirely animated documentary about his military service in the 1982 Lebanon War.

The Class is French director Laurent Cantet's narrative feature that stars junior high students who play themselves in a script they helped to write about their personal adolescent dramas.

These films, both distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, are beautiful exemples of the ways in which creatively progressive documentary and narrative filmmakers push beyond the borders of their genres and explore exciting new realms of artistic expresson.

Read my review of Waltz With Bashir and my interview with Laurent Cantet.

(PHOTOS: left: Young Ari Folman in 'Waltz With Bashir,' Sony Pictures Classics; right: Francois Begaudeau plays himself in 'The Class,' Sony Pictures Classics).