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 This is a film about growth and self discovery. We follow Ethiopian and Russian  Israelis who meet at a leadership training program in Israel. Their year of learning culminates in a journey to Ethiopia where the Ethiopian born participants return to their native villages and confront their roots. Back home in Israel, all the participants would consider themselves members of the fringes of Israeli society.  But in the highlands of the Ethiopian landscape they discover the universality of their experiences and their shared commitment to their new home in Israel. How will this journey transform them?   

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“My Sister Banchiya” tells the story of a ten year old Ethiopian child, Banchiya, who immigrated to Israel with her mother and three siblings seven years ago. Her father died while they were still in Ethiopia and her mother was run over by a truck in Israel. Banchiya and her older siblings were sent to an institution while their mother was in the hospital. Avigail , who was doing her national service in the same institution in Netanya, met Banchiya and soon began bringing her home to Jerusalem for Shabbat. A half a year later Banchiya’s mother died and Avigail’s family considered adopting her. After a period of trial and introspection, they decided that they wanted Banchiya to join the family. For the past six years Banchiya has lived with her new family in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. The film touches upon some of the challenges and difficulties arising in Banchiya’s life as a black member of a white, orthodox Jewish community and as the only adopted child in a family of ten children. She has forgotten Amharic, which makes her relationships with her Ethiopian relatives difficult-and yet she is aware of her differences from her new family. Banchiya must struggle with these basic questions of identity and dual loyalties to her adoptive family and ethnic origins.

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Tomer Heymann followed Israeli pop/world-beat band The Idan Raichel on their 2006 concert tour to Ethiopia and emerged with a documentary that rollicks and rocks. The film, part lighthearted road trip, part examination of multiculturalism in Israel, is a close-up ride with the young Israeli-Ethiopian-Yemenite band members, who muse on the loss of their heritage and on their excitement as tourists embracing roots in Africa. Black Over White deftly explores their cultural ambivalence and their experience of racism back home in Israel. One of the musicians is reunited with his grandmother in Addis, music is made with rural villagers and in urban clubs, and in one poignant sequence, future immigrants to Israel meet the musicians. The culminating concert-a fusion of Middle Eastern multiethnic grooves- is a success and emotional high point, but for the band members, the meaning of home remains elusive.

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Moshe, an 11 year-old Ethipian boy, lives in dwindling “Atidim” caravan site in the Wester Galilee and is awaiting the arrival of his mother from Ethiopia. She will not arrive and he is torn between Aharon, a 60-year-old repentant Jew who teaches him Torah, and Walter – an impulsive African American saxsophone player who has a jazz club at the edge of the site. Aharon gives Moshe a magic box and promises him that it will bring his mother to Israel. Walter gives Moshe the strength to believe only in himself.

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The daily routine of three young Israeli-Etheopian writers and their attempts to find a place in Israeli society.

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The Story of Naomi, a woman who is a prisoner in her own life. Trapped by bordom, she risks losing herself to housework. This is of course, until she meets Nigist, a Christian Ethiopian woman. A friendship quickly forms. This film is a quick and sudden reminder of Israel’s ethnic diversity, as well as one of the the struggles of the migrant workers. This film focuses in on one group in particular, the Ethiopian Christians, and their overall relationship with the greater Israeli society.

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Ethiopian Jews’ multiple names reflect the richness, wisdom and beauty of their culture — and every name tells a story. In the film, young Ethiopian Israelis share their journeys toward their names: stories of love and connection, survival and loss, anger and pride. The characters’ original names – changed without their consent upon arrival in Israel – take them back to their childhoods in mountain villages, to the hunger and fear in Sudan, to longing for loved ones who died or disappeared on the journey to Israel, to denial of their identity… and reclamation of their roots.

The post These Are My Names appeared first on Israel Film Center.