Live and Become Review

Pan's intriguing labyrinth

"NEXT week the 15th annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival gets underway and, with reliable breadth, it features more than 140 films reflecting a wide range of styles, subjects, genres and viewpoints regarding the experience of Africans and the African diaspora."

"...One of the strongest films in the lineup is a French/Belgian/Italian/Israeli feature, another tale born of misery, but brought full circle into awakening and acceptance. Director Radu Mihaileanu's epic "Live & Become" begins with an Ethiopian boy in a Sudanese refugee camp who pretends to be a Jewish orphan — a Falasha, as Ethiopian Jews are known — at the behest of his starving mother so that he can be saved in a rescue operation by Israel's Mossad. Adopted by a politically minded but non-religious Jewish family — who ironically worry that they aren't devout enough for their new charge — young Schlomo (excellently played over the years by actors Moshe Agazai, Mosche Abebe and Sirak M. Sabahat) grows up having to deal with the burden of his deception, the skin color that defines his outsider status, his secret longing for his homeland, but also a sincere, complex identification with the tenets of Judaism he comes to know.

"Covering much ground about familial love, adolescent romance, religion and ethnic differences, "Live & Become" is long but rewarding, rich in humor and warmth, and abuzz with the turmoil of juggling multiple identities that is a critical element of these cross-cultural times..."

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