His nephew portrays him as a boy on the farm before Gebrselassie himself takes over the part as an adult. His sister plays his mother, his uncle is his father, among other relatives cast in the film.

When real life met what's being billed as a "nonfiction feature," all the rules about casting were cast aside, says Leslie Woodhead, the director and writer of the Disney movie, which opens Friday in Los Angeles and New York. For a small film, "Endurance" boasts some big names; Oscar-nominated director Terrence Malick ("The Thin Red Line") is one of its producers (along with Edward Pressman), and footage is provided by famed Olympic documentarian Bud Greenspan.

Figuring out how to film the quasi-documentary, a true story that combines historic footage from the Olympics and reenactments, wasn't obvious, he adds.

"I'm aghast at how slowly I worked my way toward doing this," says Woodhead, a British documentary filmmaker. "We wanted to work with Haile in Ethiopia but hadn't resolved how we would re-create his life. Ethiopian actors from the U.S. wouldn't know how to milk a cow, and we thought we would have the same problem with city-dwelling Ethiopian actors."

Within a week of Gebrselassie's winning the gold medal in the 10,000 meters at the Atlanta Games, Woodhead traveled to Ethiopia. As he came to know the runner's extended family, the answer became apparent.

Using the family to act out the story, "who knew more about this than anyone in the whole world," would bring reality to it, the filmmakers thought. Still, the lack of acting experience was a concern. There is not a trained actor in the cast.

"Obviously, I had my real unease about whether they would be able to do this difficult thing," says Woodhead, speaking from his home in London. "I was quickly astonished by the degree of reality they brought about it. These are people who haven't seen very much, or any, TV. They aren't trying to be Sigourney Weaver or Bruce Willis. They are being the only thing they can, and the naturalness of that shines through.

"In a couple of instances, I was quite startled. In the mother's funeral scene, where the boy [as young Haile] is reduced to sobbing tears, I said, 'Where did that come from?' He said, 'I thought about my aunt. . . .' It struck me as an answer that Marlon Brando would have given back in 1956. It was the purest method acting."

Gebrselassie, speaking via telephone from Addis Ababa, says he agreed to do the film because "who wouldn't want to have his own life story told?" and because his story relays an important message about achievement against seemingly insurmountable odds.

After screenings of the film in Ethiopia, "everyone wanted to be like Haile Gebrselassie," he says. "It's a very good example for the young generation. The message is not only for the athlete. It's very important for other people to know they can do something different."

When the filmmakers traveled to the '96 Olympics, they did so with just a high-concept idea: "Explore the making of a great African long-distance runner," Woodhead says. Half a dozen leading African runners--who dominate the long-distance events--were approached, but after Woodhead met Gebrselassie, he "desperately hoped" he would win his race.

"I thought him warm, very smart, witty. He spoke decent English, and he had a fascinating story. I was rooting trackside more than anyone . . . for him to win, which he did with the last reserves of his strength and a very badly injured foot," he says. The race is included in the film in footage shot by Greenspan.

The runner's story has all the makings of legend. Born the eighth of 10 children, he grew up in a mud hut while working the fields and spending three hours a day fetching water for his family. His mother died when he was 10, and his father couldn't understand his son's obsession with running. Yet his family always considered him a "magic kid" from a very early age, Woodhead says.

In a pivotal moment that is reenacted in the movie, the 7-year-old Gebrselassie sneaks away with the family radio so that he can listen to the 10,000-meter race in the 1980 Olympics and hear Ethiopian runner Miruts Yifter win the gold medal. From that moment, he wanted to be a world-class runner.

Because "Endurance" tells the true story of a contemporary hero, Disney was interested early on in releasing the film, says Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Motion Pictures. "The story is so uplifting and really a triumph of the human spirit," Cook says. "It is inspirational and I think in the great tradition of what Disney movies have been over the years."

Disney movies also often are known for their soundtracks, but few may be as musically diverse as this one. There is so little dialogue in the movie, it gave composer John Powell "a chance to really almost write a tone poem," he says. For Powell, 34, the struggle was to compose music that wouldn't patronize Ethiopians yet still please the Western ear. Using sound recorded on location as well as commercial CDs of Ethiopian music--and computer software that helped him uncover compatible keys between East and West--he found a middle yet wide-ranging ground. He would run the original music through his computer and write around it to create a pleasing sound, he says.

To the composer's great relief, the Ethiopian musicians who have heard the soundtrack approve. "I have played with their music in such a way that they could have been very upset about it, but one singer said it feels like I'm pulling Ethiopian music into the 21st century," he says.

In fact, so does the rest of the cast, which includes many family members, none of whom had ever acted, either.

Of course, they were familiar with the script: the life of Gebrselassie, champion runner.

"The movie is true life,'' Gebrselassie said by telephone from Ethiopia. "It was easy to repeat what I did when I was younger. I passed through that way.''

The movie, which opens in Los Angeles and New York on Friday and in other U.S. cities May 21 and June 4, is an 83-minute Walt Disney production that is described by writer and director Leslie Woodhead as a "nonfiction feature that incorporates devices usually associated with fiction.''

"What we did was not a documentary, although we used real people, not actors,'' Woodhead said.

The most prominent is Gebrselassie, the eighth of 10 children born to a farmer's wife in a mud hut in Ethiopia 26 years ago.

Young Haile is played by his nephew, Yonas Zergaw, in a convincing portrayal of the boy who ran about six miles - coincidentally, 10,000 meters, the distance at which he later set the world record and won the 1996 Olympic title - back and forth to school with books tucked under his arm.

The youngster worked on his father's farm. At one point, his father, played at a young age by Tedesse Haile and as an older man by his real father, Gebrselassie Bekele, chides his son for shirking. The boy is embarrassed and hurt, and attacks the jobs more vigorously.

Father and son also did not agree on Haile's passion for running. The father wanted him to be a lawyer or doctor. The boy wanted to be another Miruts Yifter, the great Ethiopian runner.

In 1980, the boy listened on a static-filled transistor radio as Yifter won the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the Moscow Olympics.

Buoyed by Yifter's triumphs, Gebrselassie would complete his chores, including a three-hour trudge to gather water, then make long runs through the countryside.

For Gebrselassie - now one of the greatest distance runners ever - the finished product of the movie surprised him.

"I thought it would be a simple film, but when it came out, it was fantastic,'' said Gebrselassie, who watched it in Ethiopia for the first time last October.

"I cried when I saw the part of how my mother died (of cancer when he was 10) ... how she was sick and they took her to the hospital. I didn't expect it to be like that.''

The movie elicited much excitement in Ethiopia.

"People have been sending me letters of congratulations,'' Gebrselassie said. "They said it was marvelous. Everybody has been very kind.''

Gebrselassie was not only pleased because the movie conveyed the loneliness of the long-distance runner, but also because of the portrayal of Ethiopia.

"It's about the culture and all the traditions,'' he said.

The film, coproduced by Terrence Malick ("The Thin Red Line''), ends with Gebrselassie's greatest triumph - his Olympic victory at Atlanta.

His family, including his wife Alem and his father, are huddled around a TV set at 5 a.m., watching joyfully as he overtakes Kenya's Paul Tergat on the final lap.

When Gebrselassie returned to Ethiopia, about 1 million of the 3.5 million people in the capital of Addis Ababa swarmed the airport. After touring the city, Gebrselassie went to the palace to meet the president.

"Everybody said they never saw anything like it,'' he said.

The movie's only shortcoming is that it is too short - not enough of his running career is shown.

The Lalibela Cross was taken from the Medhane Alem (Saviour) church in March 1997 and was bought by a Belgian collector for just $25,000, but he agreed to give it back for the same price after being told it was stolen.

The Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Paulos, received the cross at a ceremony in Addis Ababa on Wednesday and said its return brought him ``great joy.''

``God always stands by the side of Ethiopia and he has uncovered the secrets of those who attempted to take away the Lalibela Cross from the country and the people,'' he said.

``We with the help of God have been able to recover the cross, which is of inestimable value to us.''

The Lalibela Cross is said to have healing powers. Before it was stolen, thousands of devotees travelled to the town every year to see and touch it.

Lalibela is home to several churches hewn out of solid rock in the 13th century by the Ethiopian emperor who gave his name to the town. It is one of Ethiopia's main tourist attractions and has been designated a world heritage site by UNESCO.

Ethiopian Orthodox Church officials said the man who stole the cross had confessed to police. He apparently then sold it to the Belgian collector staying in Addis Ababa in December 1997.

Ethiopian churches and monasteries hold a wealth of religious and historical relics and security has been stepped up after a number of thefts in recent years.