Original title: Va, vis et deviens
Country: France/Israel/Belgium/Italy
Language: Hebrew, French, Amharic
Number: 1032
Director: Radu Mihaileanu
Starring: Sirak M. Sabahat, Yael Abecassis, Roschdy Zem, Roni Hadar
What most people doesn't know, is that there lived over 100.000 jews in Ethiopia. They didn't know that there was any other jews becides them. But they weren't very well accepted by the christians and the muslims. But in 1984, the Israeli government developed a plan called "Operation Moses" which was to bring all the Ethiopian jews to Israel, but the same year a big drought occurs in southern part of Sudan, where christians, muslims and jews is placed in red cross camps.
It's here the story starts. A young christian Ethiopian boy named Shlomo and his mother is placed in the camp, but also there is the jews, who's there is arranged transport for. But one jewish woman just lost her child, and she agrees to adopt him and take her with him to Israel. He arrives Israel and is accepted as a jew. But his adoptive mother dies and he's placed in an orphanage, and then placed with a French Jewish family. But the society is exclusionary towards the new Ethiopian immigrants for many reasons like diseases and the questions of their jewishness. And Shlomo has a very hard time fitting into this society, but he constantly longing for his mother who's still back in Ethiopia.
Live and Become is simply a great epic drama, that spans over twenty years, and give us a great insight into the changes in the Israeli society the past three decades. How the different conflicts escalates, how the Israeli society acts towards the Ethiopians and how they are excluded from the society and how their not gonna take it. Besides the political aspects, it's a film with a lot of emphatic and afflictions, with all human emotions all the stages of longing. And we really feel bad for the young boy, and we understand his resistant toward being conformed into another society. And how he even ask the question, if Israel really is the land of milk and honey.
There's every types of characters from all the different levels of the society, both rich and poor, black and white, socialist and far-right, religious and irreligious. In other words there's discriminations between many types of jews, just like in all the other countries, even if they have the same religious beliefs. We watch Shlomo grow into this society and we also see all the political events effects him and his family. There's also some conflicts within this family as well. My conclusion of Live and Become is that it's an intense movie, with a wide range of characters, a great insight into the Israeli society through three decades, and most important, a protagonist who can guide us through it. Thumbs up.
Grade: A+
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