Israeli filmmaker Radu Mihaileanu has only three feature films to his name, but is known for a solid international reputation, the kind of director whose works are eagerly awaited for in film festivals from Toronto to Berlin. Even so, he was surprised by the interest and enthusiasm over his latest, "Va, Vis et Deviens (Live and Become)" -- a fictional tale that draws from "Operation Moses," which airlifted 80,000 Ethiopians Jews to Israel in 1984.

"I was in a quandary because I felt the film had to be made, but at the same time I was skeptical about who would be interested in this little piece of history," said the director during a recent promotion trip to Tokyo. "But after the film's success there were a lot of producers who suddenly came up and said they wanted to know more about it, and the fate of the Ethiopians after they got to Israel." And so Mihaileanu is currently at work on a documentary of the same material and laughs that "usually, it's the other way around: documentary first, fictional story afterward."

He adds that the subject hasn't palled, as it's something very close to his heart -- he knows what it's like to leave a mother behind in an uncertain political climate, to start again in a foreign country and the struggle for assimilation.