This is an Israel-France co-production, with a Romanian director. It concerns a young Ethiopian boy who goes to Israel in 1984 with Operation Moses, This was a project to rescue the Falasha, a group of black Jews who had lived in Ethiopia for centuries, from famine. Moshe, as he becomes, is not actually Jewish, however. His Christian mother sends him off and tells him not to come back to Africa until he has "become". Before getting on the truck to the airlift he is taken in hand by a Falasha woman whose son has just died. He pretends to be that son and is assisted in this by a friendly doctor who knows about the situation.
In Israel his surrogate mother, already sick, soon dies and he is adopted by an Israeli couple, secular left-wing Jews from France. He very quickly learns enough about Judaism to pass as Jewish, and, after an initial difficult period of adjustment wherein he is ostracized, largely because of his race, he finds his way in Israeli society.
Gradually Shlomo becomes more accomplished and more integrated in Israeli life. He has an off-and-on relationship with Sarah, an Israeli Jewish girl. Unfortunately, her father, who seems to be quite bigoted against blacks, opposes the relationship, ostensibly on the grounds that Shlomo isn't Jewish enough. To prove that he is, he enters and wins a religious debate on the topic "what color was Adam." He sidesteps the obvious black/white question by declaring that Adam was red, like the earth he was made from. He wins the girl's heart, but not the father's.
Eventually Shlomo goes to Paris, becomes a doctor, and returns to marry Sarah. He still has the guilty secret that he is not really Jewish, and finally reveals it when his wife tells him that she is pregnant. She is very upset, not because he isn't Jewish, but because he kept something from her. Shlomo tells his adoptive mother the truth, and she intercedes with Sarah. She forgives him, but, she says, on one condition. We never hear exactly what that is, but in the next and final scene we find Shlomo working with Medecins sans Frontieres in Africa, where, against all odds, he finds his birth mother, still in a refugee camp.It's a bit too pat, but after what Shlomo has been through, we forgive the filmmakers for this rather Hollywood-style ending.
This film won best film award at the Copenhagen festival, and it is easy to see why. While it deals with the very particular situation of the Falasha in Israel, it addresses much larger questions of identity and belonging, of prejudice and acceptance, and of the need for recognition of our common humanity. It's not a diatribe against religion: two rabbis show great compassion towards Shlomo while others show their prejudices. Nor is it really about politics: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the background, and so are the civil wars in Africa, but the film is much more about smaller, everyday interactions where people show their true selves. I don't think a brief description can do justice to this film: it should be seen.
In Israel his surrogate mother, already sick, soon dies and he is adopted by an Israeli couple, secular left-wing Jews from France. He very quickly learns enough about Judaism to pass as Jewish, and, after an initial difficult period of adjustment wherein he is ostracized, largely because of his race, he finds his way in Israeli society.
Gradually Shlomo becomes more accomplished and more integrated in Israeli life. He has an off-and-on relationship with Sarah, an Israeli Jewish girl. Unfortunately, her father, who seems to be quite bigoted against blacks, opposes the relationship, ostensibly on the grounds that Shlomo isn't Jewish enough. To prove that he is, he enters and wins a religious debate on the topic "what color was Adam." He sidesteps the obvious black/white question by declaring that Adam was red, like the earth he was made from. He wins the girl's heart, but not the father's.
Eventually Shlomo goes to Paris, becomes a doctor, and returns to marry Sarah. He still has the guilty secret that he is not really Jewish, and finally reveals it when his wife tells him that she is pregnant. She is very upset, not because he isn't Jewish, but because he kept something from her. Shlomo tells his adoptive mother the truth, and she intercedes with Sarah. She forgives him, but, she says, on one condition. We never hear exactly what that is, but in the next and final scene we find Shlomo working with Medecins sans Frontieres in Africa, where, against all odds, he finds his birth mother, still in a refugee camp.It's a bit too pat, but after what Shlomo has been through, we forgive the filmmakers for this rather Hollywood-style ending.
This film won best film award at the Copenhagen festival, and it is easy to see why. While it deals with the very particular situation of the Falasha in Israel, it addresses much larger questions of identity and belonging, of prejudice and acceptance, and of the need for recognition of our common humanity. It's not a diatribe against religion: two rabbis show great compassion towards Shlomo while others show their prejudices. Nor is it really about politics: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the background, and so are the civil wars in Africa, but the film is much more about smaller, everyday interactions where people show their true selves. I don't think a brief description can do justice to this film: it should be seen.