Sirak M. Sabahat who plays the part of the adult "Shlomo" in our opening night film, Live and Become was born in Walita, north of Ethiopia. He and his family survived a several thousand kilometer trek, by foot, to Awassa (South of Ethiopia) and in 1991 they arrived in Israel via "Operation Solomon." Sirak attended boarding school near Kefar Saba and later served in the Israeli army after graduating from high school in 1999. He went on to study acting in the University of Haïfa, and in 2004 he participated in a reality show on Israeli television before landing a starring role in Live and Become in 2005. He lives in New York City.
Zion Uness is one of the New Generation leaders of Israel's Ethiopian Community. In 1984 at the age of 4, Zion and his family immigrated to Israel as part of Operation Moses, the airlift documented in Radu Mihaileanu's feature film, Live and Become. Zion spent his first years in Israel in the north in Or-Akiva living in caravans because the Israeli government believed isolation would help the group adjust to culture shock. Today Zion lives in Washington, DC. He frequently speaks to audiences in the United States about Live and Become in an effort to facilitate education and awareness about the experiences of Ethiopian Jews—both those living in Israel as well as those still residing in Africa.
Program Change: Director Lisa Azuelos and actress Geraldine Nakache will not be able to attend the Festival. Instead, Hervé Mimran who co-wrote the film with Lisa Azuelos and also served as the film's art director will be joining us from Paris.
Hervé Mimran is a French screen writer and film director. Comme t'y es belle! is his first feature film. He co-wrote the script with director Lisa Azuelos, who also happens be his cousin. Prior to Comme t'y es belle!, Hervé worked as an assistant director in France for eight years. He is currently working on a script for a feature film about a Beatles fan living in Brooklyn entitled, All I Need is Love. He is also drafting a script for another film project about the relationship between two female friends that will star Comme t'y es Belle's Géraldine Nakache.
After completing his Israeli military service in an elite unit, Moshe Levinson went on to study political science and communications at Tel Aviv University, where he subsequently studied and taught film production. He is the creator of a number of award-winning films and television programs including the popular children's series Gingy and the feature film Yana's Friends. He currently serves as a reservist colonel in the Israeli army and is the founder and president of the television and film production company, Profile Productions, based in Tel Aviv.
L. Mark DeAngelis entered filmmaking somewhat accidentally. A lawyer by training, Mark decided to bring along a camcorder when his longtime friend and Holocaust survivor, Leah Weibel, invited him to accompany her on a trip to Auschwitz, where she had survived the atrocities of WWII. A few weeks later, Mark hired a film crew from Warsaw and his production company—Eliezer Films—was born, even if he did not quite know it yet. With Out of Faith, Mark hopes to inspire people to consider what significance their perception of ‘who they are’ has on their own lives and on society at large.
Judy Gelles received her MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1991. Her work is included in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Most recently she was awarded a Fellowship in the Arts from the Independence Foundation in Philadelphia, a project grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and an Artist Residency at the MacDowell Colony. She is the author of two artist’s books, When We Were Ten and Florida Family Portrait.
Richard Berge is a documentary filmmaker who has made films for PBS, Showtime, A&E Biography, Omnimedia and the California Arts Council. Before producing The Rape of Europa, he was a writer and producer for SPARK!, a weekly television series for KQED about the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. With director Barry Levinson, he produced Yesterday’s Tomorrows (2000, 100 minutes), a feature-length documentary that examines the human obsession with predicting the future. Before completing the Master’s program in Documentary Film at Stanford University in 1994, Berge received a BA in History from Stanford University and worked at the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Joline Makhlouf, Producer, is the East Jerusalem-based Project Co-Manager at Just Vision, a non-profit that widens the influence of Palestinian and Israeli grassroots peace builders. She has worked as a facilitator at Face to Face/Faith to Faith, Building Bridges for Peace and Seeds of Peace, all of which bring together youth from conflict zones around the world. Born and raised in Jerusalem, where she finished her high school education at Schmidt's College, Joline later lived in Jordan, where she graduated from the Royal Jordanian Air Academy with a commercial pilot's license and a diploma in aviation science.
