[ripples]

I just saw the film, "Live and Become", which is about a 9-year old Ethiopian refugee boy who's adopted by a liberal Jewish family in Israel. I sooo recommend this film to other adoptees, birth parents and adoptive family members who are involved in inter-cultural adoption.

The film was rated 4 and 4.5 out of 5 by two of Australia's highly esteemed movie critics and also won the Best Film award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival. I can see why - it's truly a very, very powerful film and excellent acting. I felt that it portrayed the adoptee, his adoptive family and his birth mother very sensitively. The scene whereby his adoptive parents first welcome the Ethiopian boy into their home is both touching and gut-wrenching at the same time. http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s1601742.htm

Here's the description of the film:
Romanian-born, Paris-based director Radu Mihaileanu's incredibly moving and highly relevant 'Live and Become' follows the life of an Ethiopian boy who is passed off as an Ethiopian Jew to escape his ravaged country. In 1984 in a Sudanese refugee camp sheltering Ethiopians displaced by civil war and famine, the Israeli army has begun 'Operation Moses,' airlifting thousands of Falashas, or Ethiopian Jews, to Israel. A Christian Ethiopian mother persuades a Falasha woman whose own son has just died from starvation, to allow her son to assume his identity. In tears, she orders her son to never divulge his secret for fear her will be returned, and tells his to 'live and become'. Renamed Schlomo, the boy is adopted by an adoring, liberal Israeli couple. However he remains an outsider, surviving only through his family's love. We follow Schlomo as he becomes a Jewish teenager and an idealistic young medical student. With the help of a local leader, he writes letters to his real mother back home and is forced to make the heart-wrenching decision about whether to admit to the deception that has shadowed his entire childhood.