Esra's Cinema Club’s offering on March 25th, to a packed house, was the documentary Sisai which won the Jerusalem International Film Festival of 2005. The film was a hauntingly simple story of a search for Sisai’s identity, and was laced with emotional ties, showing how young Ethiopians brought up in Israel today behave towards their elders, how the elders’ lifestyle is still on the lines of “the old ways” and their desire to bring their children up to live a decent life in Israel.

David Gavro, Sisai’s cousin and the film’s director, gave a frank synopsis of his life since coming to Israel at the age of 6, and his charismatic anecdotes in “not-so-clear English” gave us a hint or two that life for him had not been a merry-go-round. After many false starts he eventually decided to put his life together and enrolled in Safir College to study film and, his first love, sound engineering. In making this film of Sisai’s road to Ethiopa to find his blood father emotions were never far from the surface, and the first thing I learned about Ethiopians is that they have a wonderful sense of family and kindness and any blood relations were welcome to be brought up in their home.

As it happens David’s parents were an exceptional couple, and brought Sisai up as their own even though he was the illegitimate son of David’s mother's sister. Then the aunt also came to stay and Sisai didn’t know until just before her death, when he was 16, that his aunt was, in fact, his mother. There was a very emotional scene in the film when he went to her grave-stone and wept like a baby as he realized that, had he known, he could have treated her more like a mother than an aunt and given her a lot more love.

Sisai, David and David's father went to Ethiopia to find Sisai's real father and find him they did. He was a Christian believer and Sisai had a hard time calming him down, as he cried with such emotion on meeting his son for the first time. He was a very religious and sincere man and had nothing but love and praise for Sisai for coming to find him. They both promised to write and he has since written many heart-felt letters to Sisai.

In the meantime Sisai married Sivan, his long-term girlfriend, and David told us Sisai has bought a house, is the father of two little girls and has a mortgage, just like any young family living in Israel today.

Sisai is just such a likeable young man and we all wish him and Sivan a very happy future together.

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About the author

Sara Groundland

Sara came to live in Israel with her husband from Glasgow, Scotland in 1983. Her main interests are reading, walking and writing. She reviews the films shown at the ESRA Cinema Club, as well as wri...
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