Featured at the 1984 San Francisco International Film Festival, this controversial documentary by Israeli-born journalist Simcha Jacobovici "exposes the im- poverishment and persecution of Ethiopia's Jewish population (about 20,000), an issue heretofore veiled in a policy of silence. Falashas are exiles in their native Ethiopia. Synagogues bear padlocks, rabbis face arrest, and escapees risk capture and torture. Ethiopia's Marxist military rulers, even more so than Emperor Haile Selassie, have systematically attempted to deny them the religious self-determination which has been theirs for 2000 years, while peasant organizations perpetuate indigent conditions by denying the Falashas land to which they are entitled. Those reaching camps in bordering Sudan face hunger, disease and reprisals from other refugees who consider the Falashas to be sorcerers. Jacobovici makes a compellingly urgent case for these people; most movingly convincing are testimonies by the black Jews themselves. The fact that they are black, poor and from a nation of primary geopolitical importance to Israel may account for the hesitancy on the part of those who could help, namely Israel and the American Jewish constituency. Jacobovici and his crew have taken risks to bring the Falashas' plight to light and compel the Israeli government to action." Laura Thielen, San Francisco Int'l Film Festival '84