INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS

INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS - STORIES OF THE KINDERTRANSPORT (2000)

RATED - PG for thematic elements.

RATINGS - 28 Amazon (5/5), 60,111 Netflix (3.8/5), 781 IMDB (7.9/10).

AWARDS - Academy Award for BEST DOCUMENTARY. Another 5 wins and 4 nominations.

STORY - Imagine being a young child and your parents put you on a train to England to live with people you've never met in a place you've never seen. This is the story of 10,000 children who lived in German-held lands and whose parents sent them to Great Britain with the hopes and prayers that they would have a better chance of surviving the terror and horror the Nazis were already inflicting on Jews and others. Mixing interviews with some of these children and their 'foster' families with rare archival footage, this Oscar winning film for BEST DOCUMENTARY, is a powerful story of the courage of not only these children but their parents who were willing to sacrifice for them. Almost all of these children lost their parents to Nazi atrocities. Some of them were able to help get their parents liberated after they reached England. One girl was pulled out of the window of the train as it was leaving because her father couldn't bear to see her go. She survived eight concentration camps to tell her story. Her parents did not. 1,500,000 children were exterminated by the Nazis. These 10,000 lived because of the compassion and kindness of the citizens of Great Britain. According to the film, a bill in the U.S. Congress died in committee because it was determined that 'adopting' the 25,000 children being proposed was a violation of God's law by separating parents from their children. While many of the films rightly emphasize the horrors of the holocaust, this one shows the goodness of those who gave of themselves so 10,000 children could live. A fascinating and moving film, not like other holocaust films. Lu G. for Lu's Reviews. 06/27/2009.

LINKS - AMAZON, IMDB.

LIVE AND BECOME

LIVE AND BECOME - 2005

RATED - NR but probably PG-13 for some language and violence.

RATINGS - 7 Amazon (4.5/5), 2,477 Netflix (4/5), 2,130 IMDB (8/10).

AWARDS - 9 wins and 6 nominations at numerous film festivals.

THEMES - Relationships, spirituality, justice.

STORY - This is the story of Schlomo (Solomon), a 9 year old Ethiopian young boy whose Christian mother disguises him as an Ethiopian Jew to take the place of a Jewish boy his age who has just died and whose mother is being airlifted out of a Sudan refugee camp in 1984 as part of a rescue mission operated by the Israeli secret service to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. His mother's parting words as he very reluctantly leaves are 'go, live and become'. He does go and he does live (his 'new' mother dies shortly after arriving in Israel) and the film is about becoming. He is adopted by a secular Jewish family. Becoming is hard enough growing up under normal circumstances. What if you must keep the secret that you are not Jewish and should never have been admitted to the country, learn to live in family where you don't fit in easily, adapt to a culture that is foreign and unfriendly to blacks and experience all the many adolescent challenges of hormones, loneliness, and a great ache for your homeland and birth mother? How does one cope with all these challenges? The three actors that play the various stages of Schlomo's life do an outstanding job. There are many levels which hit your emotions as you watch this. You want to him to survive and mature but it's so difficult, the odds are not good and you know he most likely would have been dead had he stayed in Sudan. Somehow he must persevere and overcome and 'become'. A heart-breaking and uplifting story of the human spirit and the will to live and become. Lu G. for Lu's Reviews. 05/16/2009.

LINKS - AMAZON, IMDB.