Live and Become

In 1984 thousands of Ethiopian Jews were carried from refugee camps in Sudan to Israel in an operation called Operation Moses. Eight thousand arrived; four thousand died on the walk to the camps or inside them. Radu Mihăileanu's film plants a lie inside that operation. A Christian Ethiopian mother, so that he may escape starvation, hands her son to a Jewish woman whose own child has just died, and forces him to go. Schlomo grows up in Israel concealing three things all his life: he is not Jewish, he is not an orphan, and his mother is alive. The film's strength is refusing to present Israel as either a promise or a trap. Schlomo finds love, education and Western culture there, and he also finds racism and war in the occupied territories. It won the audience award at the Berlin Film Festival and Best Film at the Copenhagen festival in 2005. Who it is for: viewers who like drama built on migration, belonging and identity. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a short film, since this runs close to two and a half hours across three periods of a life.