Live and Become
Live and Become
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton MA
7:00PM
Stay for a discussion after the film facilitated by Len Lyons, author of
The
Ethiopian Jews of Israel: Personal Stories of Life in the Promised Land.
Live and Become
(Va, Vis et Deviens) , directed by Radu Mihaileanu (2005,
France/Belgium/Italy/Israel, 140 min., in Hebrew/French/Amharic with English
subtitles, 35mm)
Radu Mihaileanu directs this
magnificent, epic story of an Ethiopian boy who is airlifted from a Sudanese
refugee camp to Israel in 1984 dur ing Operation Moses. Although Shlomo grows
up and thrives as an adoptive son of a loving family, he is plagued by two big
secrets: He is neither a Jew nor an orphan, just an African boy who survived.
Three different actors, including, as the adult Shlomo, Sirak M. Sabahat, who
made his own trek across Ethiopia to an airlift to Israel, portray Shlomo at
various stages of his life. Israeli actress Yaël Abaccasis and French
actor Roschdy Zem movingly portray his adoptive parents.
Said
New York Times film
critic Stephen Holden: “…
Live and Become exerts a tidal pull. It makes
you feel the weight of history, of populations on the move in a restless
multicultural world. It makes you reconsider cultural assimilation, a process
that may seem to be complete but whose underlying conflicts may never be fully
resolved.”
Live and Become
won the Audience Award for Best Feature Fiction at the 2005 Boston Jewish Film
Festival, where actor Sirak M. Sabahat was present. It also won the Prize
of the Ecumenical July at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival and a César (French
Academy Award) for Best Screenplay.
Director Radu Mihaileanu also
directed
Train of Life (Train de Vie) , which screened at the 1998
Boston Jewish Film Festival and the new French hit,
The Concert (Le Concert)
, which will be copresented by The Boston Jewish Film Festival in this year’s
Boston French Film Festival at the MFA (July 8-25).
View the trailer by
clicking here .