Live and Become (2005)

This is one of the best films i have ever seen . It was only scheduled for one screening at Van film fest in 2005 but after an email campaign got a second screening, peoples choice award and subsequently general release, still not seen by as many as it deserves. Sublime! It should be part of every schools curriculum. If its the only film you ever see , let this be it. The direction, storytelling , performances are all heart wrenching and uplifting. The fact that i am writing about it 2 years later says something! It restored my faith in cinema and the power it has to change and empower lives. English title is 'Live and Become" Does anyone know if its on DVD or video?

Fmovies: The writer and director of this utterly amazing and gut-wrenching film is the Romanian Jewish emigré to Paris, Radu Mihaileanu (born 1958). Every shot, every detail, every performance, and all the dialogue, is completely and totally brilliant. That perfection, plus Mihaileanu's impassioned fury, is what gives this film its unique power. The film contains many unknown actors and actresses who have never appeared in anything before or since, and they are often the most effective people in the film, under the director's sure and sympathetic hand. The film deals with the strange story of the people known as the 'Falashas'. People in the West who are old enough to remember the news stories of 1980 may dimly recall the incidents, as they were so bizarre as to seem almost incredible at the time. The Falashas certainly made front page news for weeks. The Falashas are the so-called 'black Jews' of Ethiopia. They had lived for perhaps 2,000 years or more as a tiny minority in Ethiopia, and they are of Ethiopian blood. But instead of being Christians like the majority of Ethiopians, they are Jews. No one knows how or why they became Jews or what their original story really is. Then one day the Israeli Government decided to rescue them from the oppressive Mengistu Regime which existed in Ethiopia in 1980 (Mengistu was a fanatical communist of the Stalinist persuasion, and a psychopathic mass murderer). The Israelis wanted to airlift all of the Falashas and take them to Israel! But this had to be done in total secrecy. Also, the Israelis could not land their aircraft in Ethiopia, so the Falashas had to make their own way on foot to the Sudan, from where they would be collected from a giant refugee camp which existed there. So 12,000 Falashas set out for the Sudan in a vast and tattered migration, 4,000 of them dying on the way. Only 8,000 reached their destination more than 1,000 miles away, dehydrated, starving, ill, and exhausted, and many of them dying. The story of the film commences in the camp, when a Falasha woman holds her very young son dead in her arms and realizes that she has lost everything; she herself is also dying. Meanwhile, an Ethiopian Christian woman and her son of the same age are also in the same part of the camp, but they are still healthy. The Christian woman pretends that her son is the dead boy so that he can be evacuated as a Jew, and the Falasha woman decides to help him and agrees to the deception. The Israelis come and are fanatical about screening out the Christians and will only take Jews, so they interview them mercilessly. The boy has been told to say he is called Solomon ('Schlomo' in Israel), his father is Isaac, he is told the village name, etc., to convinced the Israelis. But he does not want to go and leave his mother, whom he loves above all else. She turns harsh with him and pushes him away and says: 'Go, live and become! And only after you have become, then come back to me!' They are both heart-broken. Both the Ethiopian women are amazing, overwhelmingly effective despite being non-professionals. So the boy is swept up in the evacuation and gets through the Israeli screening process. He and a plane-load of Falashas land in Tell Aviv, dazed and totally confused. They are kept in isolation for months and repeatedly screened. And that is only the beginning of the long and emotional story. The little boy is brilliantly portrayed by a genuine Falashsa boy named Mosche Agazai, and equally brilliantly played as an adolescent by another real Falasha, Moshe Abebe. Because &#

I can only talk in superlatives about this movie. It's so powerful that it takes a second viewing to realize that in fact it's even more powerful... Yes, there is a history lesson in it (Falashas, Middle East, Cold War, Gulf War etc.), and yes, it's an interesting tale about a person whom you just have to think to be real, but more than that, it's so universal in its way of talking about our search for a secure identity... searching for it in a process at the end of which we hope to end up in some nice future at the same time not having forgotten that what was precious in our past. To arrive at that, so much help is needed from good people you can trust, or so much luck, if you want to say it that way... This film will make you realize that and in the process it will awaken in you an overwhelming feeling of respect for human dignity as well.

To Radu Mihaileanu I can only say, continue to give us this good films, please. If it takes years of research as it did in this case, so be it. Oh, and I hope to see all of the actors, too, again some day. How stupid of me, I will, of course, at the third viewing of 'Va, vis et deviens'.

Live and Become fmovies. I have just finished watching "vas vis et deviens" and must say that this is one of the most thought provoking pictures i have seen in a longtime. Many controversial issues were raised. Although racism and the never ending question of "who is a Jew?" were raised , less obvious, more subdued issues were also dealt with. The most intriguing issue raised deals with separating state and religion. The viewer essentially comes to see situations in shades of grey. The viewer is asked to find himself in the Israeli government without the movie even dealing with governmental issues. Not only are you constantly challenged in this movie but you will be offended and intrigued by it. This is a definite must see.

In my opinion, Radu Mihaileanu, the genius director of 'Train de Vie', has created his masterpiece in his second film. This is the story of an African boy who returns to life from the brink of death. The movie depicts his fight, his ambitions, passions and the power of love. It is a very weird experience for me to enjoy a movie telling the story of a black Jewish! boy. I think, this movie must also play a very important role in the war against racism. There has been a huge conflict for decades in Middle East between Palestine and Israel. I hope that the sense of humanity and love in this movie will help ending all conflicts on earth. Never forget that same creator has created all of us and Adam was a redskin.

I am an old man and an inveterate cinema-goer since my early youth. I admit that I have been and still am perhaps rather too demanding where films are concerned because, to be honest, out of the innumerable films I have enjoyed throughout the long years of my life, the ones that really succeeded in stunning me as masterpieces which nailed me to my seat from the start of the projection to its very end can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But "Va,vis et deviens" is most certainly one of them in all respects. It aims directly at what is noble in us, and it does so in simple and understandable terms. Pity that the word "excellent" is used so frequently these days, for I now feel the need of yet a stronger adjective to qualify this film.