Product Description

Studio: Repnet Llc Release Date: 04/07/2009

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24022 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-04-07
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: French, Amharic
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 140 minutes

Review
LIVE AND BECOME **** Starring Yael Abecassis, Roschdy Zem, Moshe Agazai, Mosche Abebe and Sirak M. Sabahat. Directed and written by Ra-du Mihaileanu. Produced by Denis Carol, Marie Masmonteil and Radii Mihaileanu. A Menemsha release. Drama. Aramaic-, Hebrew- and French-language; subtitled. Not yet rated. Running time: 144 min. "Live and Become" received a rare standing ovation at the Telluride Film Festival, evidence of the emotional power of a remarkable journey of discovery. The film centers on the plight of Ethiopian Jews, called Falashas, forced to flee to Sudanese refugee camps for relief from persecution and famine. In 1984, "Oper­ation Moses" begins the airlift of Falashas to Israel. A Christian woman in a refugee camp wants a better life for her nine-year-old son (Moshe Agazai). She orders him to pretend to be Jewish so he can be air­lifted out. After a poignant silent glance with the boy's mother, a Falasha woman whose son has recently died takes the boy's hand as she boards the plane to Israel. She names him Schlomo and pass­es him off as her own son. But in Israel, the adopted mother dies. Agazai gives Schlomo a face full of sadness as he yearns for his mother back in Africa. Schlomo is mystified by life in Israel, which is radically different from anything he had ever known. He is adopt­ed by a liberal Israeli couple, Yael (Yael Abecassis) and Yoram (Roschdy Zem), with two children. Yael becomes a fiery defender of Schlomo against the preju­dices he faces as he begins a new life. Schlomo must create a new identity while facing hostility as a black immigrant and always fearing discovery as a non-Jew. His struggles are extremely affecting. In the distinctive cast, non-professionals seam­lessly mix with accomplished actors while "Live and Become" builds to an unforget­table final image. --Ed Scheid, Box Office Magazine

About the Actor
Sirak Sabahat plays the adult Shlomo in Live and Become. He was uniquely qualified for the role: Born in Ethiopia, Sirak s own migration to Israel is an amazing story of success and struggle not just to survive, but to LIVE AND BECOME. My name is Sirak M. Sabahat. Born on December 5th, 1981, as the eldest of four brothers, I spent the first years of my childhood in Walita in Northern Ethiopia. My life changed drastically in 1991 at the age of eleven. Being a member of the minority African Jewish community, my family and I left the town of Awassa in Southern Ethiopia to embark on our long and dangerous journey to Israel. We headed north towards the capital Addis Ababa, walking thousands of miles through the hot and dry desert. It was a long and hard march; and many of my relatives died on the way, suffering from hunger, cold and illness. When we finally arrived in Addis Ababa, we had to wait, fearing for our lives for five months in the interim camp, until the Israeli Embassy was able to bring the Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Operation Solomon was launched. With nothing but the clothes we were wearing, we were put on military air planes to be taken to the Promised Land. We arrived in Israel with high hopes and a strong feeling of relief just to face yet another hardship. It was a new country with a different culture; and the process of adaptation was not an easy one. Not everybody welcomed us: We were among the first Black Jews in Israel. For eight months, we were put up at Kiryat Shmona, cut off from the world around us. This was done to allow us to adjust to the new country first before finding our way in the new society. Following that, we were transferred to a trailer park near Naharia before finally arriving in our new home in the town of Ramla. I shortly left Ramla, going to a boarding school for gifted children near Kefar Saba. After all that we had gone through together, the separation from my family was not an easy one. At school, falling in was more difficult than I had expected. I was the only Black child; and my classmates often laughed at me or called me names. But I kept my spirits high and learned to navigate through hard times without letting it get me down. After graduating from high school in 1999, I started my acting studies at Haifa University. Here, I became the head of the Ethiopian Students Association, trying to encourage the integration and inspiration for Higher Education among the Ethiopian students in Haifa and all Israel. After my studies, I was cast for a Reality TV show and elected as the best actor on that program. I also became a host for a children s show on the Israeli First Channel. These acting experiences lead to my role as the lead actor in the French-Israeli co-production Va, Vis et Deviens Live and Become , for which I was nominated for an Israeli Academy Award in 2005. I have been on stage in Israel as well as in front of the camera, most recently appearing on stage as the lead in a production of August Strindberg s Miss Julia . I currently live in New York City.

About the Director
Born in Rumania on April 23rd 1958, Radu Mihaileanu emigrated to Israel and France in his teens. He studied filmmaking in Paris, taking a degree in 1983. Thereafter he worked as an assistant director on a number of large productions, most notably for American moviegoers on the James Bond film A View To a Kill (1987) before he established himself as a world class director with such acclaimed films as Betrayal (1993) and Train of Life (1998). With Live and Become I hope to provoke a large question. What is it, to become? Which is the question the little boy Schlomo must ask, all of his life. His mother says to him, Don t come back before becoming. And so he is forced to ask himself, What do I have to become? What do I have to do, to come back? And what she wanted all along was for him to become, simply, a human being.

Customer Reviews

The adventures of an Ethiopian boy in Israel
This is an epic story, following the life of an Ethiopian boy for about 15 years, from a camp in Sudan to Israel and France. Comparisons to "Forrest Gump" will be made by some as this film turns pages of history and has a lot of heart.

When Israelis come to Sudan to rescue Ethiopian Jews as part of "Operation Moses" (1984), Salomon's mother, an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian urges him to go to Israel and pass as a Jew, so he won't die in the camp. Salomon is only 9 at the time and obeys his mother, leaves for Israel with an Ethiopian Jew woman who lost her son in the camp, and becomes known as "Schlomo". Once in Israel, Schlomo's new mother dies and after a rough time, the boy is placed for adoption and ends up in a liberal French-Israeli family. The third mother is thus "white" but loves him immensely. (The film does go into a sweet and interesting discussion of races). This all happens in the first minutes of this beautifully-filmed story which I will not spoil for you.

"Live and Become" explores finding one's identity, dealing with adversity, understanding cultural differences, searching for true friends (and don't we all need good friends?) and striving for excellence. There is humor too in this drama, like the scene when Schlomo decides to turn himself in at the police station.
The acting by the three boys that play Schlomo at different ages is very good. I found writer/director Radu Mihaileanu amazing, what a love story!

A few warnings: at 2 hours and 15 minutes this film might seem slow to some, but I believe it needs all that time to tell the story, and it picks up speed at the end. The film is not yet rated in the USA but because of mature themes, some language (including couple F-words in subtitles) and a particular scene I would not show it to children younger than 12.

A Universally Inspiring Drama about the Exodus of a Nearly Forgotten People
"Live and Become" is one family's fictionalized story of the historic exodus of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the 1980s.

Today, Ethiopian Jews aren't quite as surprising a group as they were when they first emerged on the world stage. This year, the story of world-class peace activist Ephraim Isaac showed up as one of the honorees in "Interfaith Heroes 2."

As a journalist in the 1980s, I visited Ethiopian Jewish communities in Israel and experienced first-hand the bittersweet nature of their exodus from life-threatening conditions in Ethiopia to this new homeland. While Israelis, overall, worked hard to make them feel welcome -- they also experienced bigotry, suspicion and the bewilderment of cultural displacement.

In Radu Mihaileanu's movie, "Live and Become," he heightens the passionate connection with Ethiopia. He introduces his main character, Schlomo, as a 9-year-old boy who two Ethiopian mothers nearing their own deaths decide to "save" by declaring him a Jewish child.

When Schlomo arrives in Israel, he must deal with an intense homesickness, bigotry from a few white Jewish neighbors and a guilty secret about his non-Jewish identity that he fears may lead to his imprisonment. That's a whole lot for a 9-year-old boy to shoulder and it's understandable that, most of the time, Schlomo walks through his new life with his handsome face bowed.

But Schlomo is strong, extremely smart, talented at languages -- and in his heart he carries an almost instinctively Jewish love of God and the world. He pours his life into Torah study. He strives to become even better than those few students who want to humiliate him.

Finally, Schlomo benefits from an Israeli family who adopt him and become his strongest defense. If you're not Jewish and don't particularly care about Israel -- the film still is stirring. On a human level, this is a heart-warming movie about the spiritual callings of both parents and children.

The film runs nearly two and a half hours and, eventually, Schlomo becomes a young man and falls in love with a white Jewish girl, named Sarah. Unfortunately, Sarah and Schlomo have a major crisis in their relationship. I won't spoil the outcome, but as their emotions flow back and forth -- Sarah eventually says to Schlomo: "It is amazing how many mothers love you!" And that's certainly true, we have to agree.

As a parent watching this film myself, that scene was stirring. This is a rare movie if only because the parents (with one or two horrible exceptions) are depicted from start to finish as fiercely, compassionately committed in their love of their children. There's a great deal of hope portrayed here for the world's orphaned children -- and that's a very welcome message these days.

In the end, that makes "Live and Become" is a universal experience.

LIVE AND BECOME!!
This is the story of Schlomo (Solomon), a 9 year old Ethiopian young boy whose Christian mother disguises him as an Ethiopian Jew to take the place of a Jewish boy his age who has just died and whose mother is being airlifted out of a Sudan refugee camp in 1984 as part of a rescue mission operated by the Israeli secret service to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. His mother's parting words as he very reluctantly leaves are 'go, live and become'. He does go and he does live (his 'new' mother dies shortly after arriving in Israel) and the film is about becoming. He is adopted by a secular Jewish family. Becoming is hard enough growing up under normal circumstances. What if you must keep the secret that you are not Jewish and should never have been admitted to the country, learn to live in family where you don't fit in easily, adapt to a culture that is foreign and unfriendly to blacks and experience all the many adolescent challenges of hormones, loneliness, and a great ache for your homeland and birth mother? How does one cope with all these challenges? The three actors that play the various stages of Schlomo's life do an outstanding job. There are many levels which hit your emotions as you watch this. You want to him to survive and mature but it's so difficult, the odds are not good and you know he most likely would have been dead had he stayed in Sudan. Somehow he must persevere and overcome and 'become'. A heart-breaking and uplifting story of the human spirit and the will to live and become. Lu G. for Lu's Reviews.