Best movies like Stones

Three parallel stories of immigrants in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War and about coming together while sealed in a room during the Scud attacks.

Eli is a teenager struggling with an eating disorder, and every aspect of his life is on the brink of disaster. He lives in a seedy neighborhood in Southern Tel Aviv with his mother and her new husband, two ex-junkies, while his alcoholic father is an unemployed artist and street philosopher. Eli's desperate efforts to unite his family spin out of control, when a minor family dispute erupts into a cataclysmic tragedy.

Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.

Meduzot (the Hebrew word for Jellyfish) tells the story of three very different Israeli women living in Tel Aviv whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life. Batya, a catering waitress, takes in a young child apparently abandoned at a local beach. Batya is one of the servers at the wedding reception of Keren, a young bride who breaks her leg in trying to escape from a locked toilet stall, which ruins her chance at a romantic honeymoon in the Caribbean. One of the guests is Joy, a Philippine chore woman attending the event with her employer, and who doesn't speak any Hebrew (she communicates mainly in English), and who is guilt-ridden after having left her young son behind in the Philippines.

Life in a Tel Aviv apartment complex, an urban mosaic whose seedy characters, try as they might, can't get out of one another's faces. Gabi, a bobbed haired sexpot, and her lover Hezi—who's older, balding and married—rent a room to have an affair, while Ezra, a pot bellied divorcee, supervises an illegal construction site next door. All this racket drives Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor, to a mental breakdown. Other characters include illegal Chinese immigrants, a teenage boy who's afraid to serve in the army, and a corrupt police detective.

An Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv discovers a dark secret about his wife in the aftermath of a suicide bombing.

Tel Aviv, Israel. The twisted paths of three very different men brutally collide due to a chain of unspeakable murders: a grieving father who has been doomed to seek vengeance and a police detective who boldly crosses the narrow boundary between law and crime meet a religion teacher suspected of being the murderer.

A delicate, poetic cinematic work, consisting of two parallel axes. Lenny Sadeh is a Tel Aviv based scholar who passes through the last day of her life. Yasmin Nasser, an Arab nurse who lives in Jaffa, is interrogated by the police. The worlds of these two women meet for a critical moment and bound together inseparably.

Charles Hodgson is a British aristocrat who decides to become a thief as a way of getting at his twin brother, Earl, a security expert who has built a supposedly impregnable vault in Tel Aviv, which holds a cache of diamonds. For the caper, Charles enlists Archie, a heist expert, and Sally. He also becomes acquainted with an American woman, Zelda Shapiro, who is in Israel looking for a new husband.

The flat on the third floor of a Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv was where my grandparents lived since they immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s. Were it not for the view from the windows, one might have thought that the flat was in Berlin. When my grandmother passed away at the age of 98 we were called to the flat to clear out what was left. Objects, pictures, letters and documents awaited us, revealing traces of a troubled and unknown past. The film begins with the emptying out of a flat and develops into a riveting adventure, involving unexpected national interests, a friendship that crosses enemy lines, and deeply repressed family emotions. And even reveals some secrets that should have probably remained untold...

A gay New York Times travel writer comes to Tel Aviv after suffering a tragedy. The energy of the city and his relationship with a younger man brings him back to life.

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.

Ajami is an area of Tel Aviv in Israel where Arabs, Palestinians, Jews and Christians live together in a tense atmosphere. Omar, an Israeli Arab, struggles to save his family from a gang of extortionists. He also courts a beautiful Christian girl: Hadir. Malek, an illegal Palestinian worker, tries to collect enough money to pay for his mother's operation. Dando, an Israeli cop, does his utmost to find his missing brother who may have been killed by Palestinians.

The unbelievable story of 22 year old Or, who secretly finances his sex change operation in Thailand by lying to his conservative parents and then returns home as a woman to face her new life, her family and the cost of living her dream

In 1939, Kalman, an ambitious young businessman, leaves Europe to join his sister Samantha in Palestine. She lives with Dov, an idealistic architect obsessed with the Bauhaus style. With their friends, they form a group, which discusses the future Israeli State.

Movie follows two young gay hustlers through interwoven stories during a night in Tel Aviv.

Shlomo who discovers in his son's Assaf room, women's clothing and accessories, decides to 'teach the boy a lesson'. When Assaf returns to his parents' home on a rainy night from a party, his attempts to enter home fail. His father, with the silent consent of his mother, locked the door. At present, 4 years later, Gallia turns to an investigation agency to help her find her son Assaf and bring him to Shlomo, his father who is dying of cancer. One night, at a night club in Tel Aviv, Assaf is seen performing as a beautiful transgender lady singer who goes by the name of Anna. After a few days a private nurse turns up at Shlomo's room at the hospital, sent as she claims by the insurance agency to assist Shlomo. The nurse is Anna (his son Assaf) and she manages to conquer Shlomo's heart by her charming personality and her special attitude toward life.

Seventy years after his grandfather escapes from Nazi Germany to Palestine, Israeli documentary director Tomer Heymann returns to the country of his ancestors to present his film "Paper Dolls" at the Berlin International Film Festival, and there meets a man who will change his life. This 48-hour love affair, originating in Berghain Panorama Bar, develops into a significant relationship between Tomer and Andreas Merk, a German dancer.

Documentarian Ra'anan Alexandrowicz accompanies a Palestinian tour group on a three-day sight-seeing trip to Israel.

Yoav's demons start haunting him after his best friend becomes pregnant, without telling him, and after his boyfriend of 15 years starts talking about children, too. His life unravels, and self-destruction seems inevitable.

A Tel Aviv taxi breaks down, and while the driver attempts to repair it, the passengers take shelter and relate tales to each other. One man relates how he became a hero, in a comic fashion, while on Army maneuvers; an elderly woman tells of her first visit to the big city; another woman tells how she and her husband invited his boss and his wife to their home for dinner, with the intent of getting the husband a raise, and they wound up in a hospital thinking they had food poisoning. Another story concerns how the police caught a demented-thief who stole from a bank to give money to the poor.

A party in Tel Aviv, Israel. Danny is looking for Max to share that she is pregnant with his child; but Max has just started a new relationship with Avishag whose rough sexual fantasy he is trying to make come true.

At thirty-seven, Miri is a twice-widowed, El Al flight attendant. Her well-regulated existence is suddenly turned upside down by an abandoned Chinese boy whose migrant-worker mother has been summarily deported from Israel. The film is a touching comic-drama in which two human beings -- as different from each other as Tel Aviv is from Beijing -- accompany each other on a remarkable journey, one that takes them both back to a meaningful life.

Three stories about three women: one is trying to find the right guy; one is trying to get a divorce from her runaway husband so she takes hostages; one turns Tel Aviv upside down in order to save a kitten trapped in a storm drain.

When Yoel hears about an imminent Iranian military attack on Tel Aviv, he knows what to do - escape with his family to a safe haven in Jerusalem. His son Assaf, who is a filmmaker and about to become a father himself, wants to give Yoel one last lead role in his movie by melting the fictional world into bittersweet reality.

In the easy-going, sexually-liberated 1970's Tel Aviv, three young friends, struggling filmmaker Nati, his impressionable girlfriend Ossi and his geeky friend Mushon, move in together in a small apartment in Dizengoff Street number 99. By day, they work a boring desk office job but by night the city is their playground. Their overall goal is to make their way into the commercial movie making business, but harsh realities and romances often sidetrack them. Their fourth friend and Nati's older other girlfriend is aspiring musician, Miri.

The story of Salomonico who works in the Tel Aviv Port and tries to defend his house and his life.

In 2000, as the Hezbollah organization takes over Lebanon, Yossi, a Lebanese soldier, helps his friend Fouad to flee the country in order to avoid punishment, as he’s been working against them for 16 years. Fouad takes refuge in Israel with his daughter, Tanya. A few years later, a new war breaks out in Lebanon, causing tensions at the Israeli border. Yossi’s wife, Myriam, decides to go there and asks for Tanya’s help to look for their soldier son, who hasn’t given sign of life since then. This journey will allow the two women to share their sorrows and heal together.

The film captures the daily duality of three young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, caught between hometown tradition and big city abandon, and the price they must pay for a lifestyle that seems obvious to many: the freedom to work, party, fuck, and choose.

Set in Tel Aviv, focuses on an interconnected group of friends and their various relationships. At the center is the adorably bookish Omer, about to turn 30, who still hasn't found himself, and his free-spirited best friend Miki, who both end up inadvertently dating the same handsome journalist, Ronen.

The film takes place in Tel Aviv, much of it in a fictitious local pub called Barbie, a satirical nickname for a famous Israeli mental health institution. The pub's name hints at the characters and the events which occur in the pub and which befall its owner (Daliah), the employees and customers. The plot unfolds with a streak of violence which takes a surprising turn.

Aviva, a hard-working hotel cook in the small northern Israeli town of Tiberias, is on the brink of finally fulfilling her lifelong dream. For years she kept her remarkable writing abilities under wraps, until her sister, Anita, introduces her to Oded, an accomplished novelist. Immediately recognizing Aviva's talent, Oded takes her under his wing, promising to help her achieve greatness. But the journey to greatness effects her life and the lives of her family - her unemployed husband, her trouble children, her unstable mother, and primarily her sister, a funny and sensitive woman who have her own dreams. When Aviva discovered that Oded has other plans for her work, her world collapses.

Yacine is the veterinarian of the only zoo remaining in the Palestinian West Bank. He lives alone with his 10-year old son, Ziad. The kid has a special bond with the two giraffes in the zoo. He seems to be the only one to communicate with them. After an air raid in the region the male giraffe dies. His mate, Rita, won’t survive unless the veterinarian finds her a new companion. The only zoo that might provide this animal is located in Tel Aviv ...

Vicky (Angelica Vale) travels to Israel dressed as a nun to find her estranged husband, who is an illegal salsa dancing teacher in Tel Aviv. On her way there she meets Yoni (Angel Bonanni), a shy University professor who helps her go through Israeli customs.

In a bustling Tel Aviv, a man suffering from insomnia tries to remember if someone actually shot him in one the city's underground parking garages. He no longer knows what is real or a dream while the city increasingly reflects the human condition. A young woman wakes up in a hotel room in Shanghai from that dream by a mysterious phone call. A fragmented conversation with a stranger who seems to also be a lover, rolls into a dazed odyssey in what seems like another dream amidst nocturnal Shanghai.