Best movies like Tel Aviv Stories

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.

The sequel to "Yossi and Jagger" finds character Yossi (Ohad Knoller) leading a sad existence after losing his partner Jagger on the battlefield. A chance encounter with a middle-aged woman linked to his past shakes up his otherwise staid routine and sends him on a spontaneous pilgrimage to Tel Aviv. It is on the roads of southern Israel that he reignites the fire of his former self.

When Eyal finishes the week of mourning for his late son, his wife urges him to return to their routine but instead he gets high with a young neighbor and sets out to discover that there are still things in his life worth living for.

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.

Documentary of three gay men living in the Palestine-Israel region trade reflections on their situation and that of the region they live.

In the city of Jaffa; a young girl plans to run away with her secret lover, when a tragedy forever changes the course of their lives. Jaffa is a mixed Arabic - Jewish seaside city near Tel Aviv, where Reuven Wolf (Moni Moshonov) has a garage for repairing cars. His wife Ossi (Ronit Elkabetz), a vain, self-centered woman, just makes everybody's life difficult. The couple's daughter, Mali Wolf (Dana Ivgy), has secretly fallen in love with her childhood friend, the young Toufik (newcomer Mahmud Shalaby), a hard-working youth who has come as a helping hand to his Israeli-Arab father Hassan, a long-time mechanic working for Reuven.

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.

An accidental murder brings two girls together in a series of wild crimes and romance over the course of an evening.

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.

Eager to provide a better future for her son, Fadi, divorcée Muna Farah leaves her Palestinian homeland and takes up residence in rural Illinois -- just in time to encounter the domestic repercussions of America's disastrous war in Iraq. Now, the duo must reinvent their lives with some help from Muna's sister, Raghda, and brother-in-law, Nabeel.

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.

The movie follows a group of young friends in the city of Tel Aviv and is as much a love song to the city as it is an exploration of the claim that people in Tel Aviv are isolated from the rest of the country and the turmoil it's going through. The movie looks at young people's lives in Tel Aviv through the POVs of gays and straights, Jews and Arabs, men and women.

'Chance' is a black comedy about how hard it is to find "the one". Mostly told from the point-of-view of a young, sexually aggressive woman, named Chance, whom according to her: "we're all out there looking for true love", which turns out to be a very elusive thing indeed, and Chance is no exception. She's desperately on the prowl for a man, but since she's more mouse than cat, she gets herself into scrape after scrape in her screwball pursuit of love. Surrounded by a bevy of adoring but completely wrong-for-her men (and one dead girl from Manchester, England), Chance has to pick her way through her messy life in order to figure out which guy is "it".

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...

This feature is one of the Israeli cinematography milestones. It displays the atmosphere of the late Israeli 50s from the view of young boy Alex, just becoming 13. His mom is the classic "Polish Mother", his school friends are young hustlers dreaming of nude girls, his schoolmaster is a nervous Russian immigrant. The street speech is full of Polish, Russian, and Farsi slang, full of the small talk that had later entered the everyday speech. The soundtrack, which is quite remarkable, is built solely on the American music of the period. Everyone in the feature finds one's love and happiness.

A group of friends in a Tel Aviv suburb get together to watch Universong, a Eurovision-like television song contest. They gather to watch and are depressed by the lifelessness of the Israeli entry, a parody of many recent offerings, a flashy, grating song about "amour." Realizing that Anat is distraught over the crisis in her marriage, they decide to compose a song to cheer her up. As a lark, they enters their cellphone video of it in next year's contest, and it becomes Israel's entry.

Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza's parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don't know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She's also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.

Two pairs of assassins are sent by a holocaust survivor's son to bring the last Nazi for a show trial in Israel.

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.

The story of straight-edge literature professor Vivian who travels to Reno to get away from a relationship breakup when she falls in love with an attractive and unconventional girl named Cay.

Tel Aviv, Summer 1989. Boaz, a beautiful and alluring linguistics student, receives anonymous, male written love letters, that undermine his sexual identity and interfere on his peaceful life with his beloved girlfriend.

In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.

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

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

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.

The trial story of Viviane Amsalem's five year fight to obtain her divorce in front of the only legal authority competent for divorce cases in Israel, the Rabbinical Court.

Sallah Shabati, the patriarch of the big family recently arrived to Israel from Yemen, tries to make money and get better housing, in a country that can barely provide for its own and is in the midst of absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

A group of friends at a Jerusalem retirement home build a machine for self-euthanasia in order to help their terminally ill friend. When rumors of the machine begin to spread, more and more people ask for their help, and the friends are faced with an emotional dilemma

Gote and Eli are two aging friends who don't want to age. Gote is a lifeguard who's fighting peepers on the Tel-Aviv beach. Eli is a guitar player who dreams of building a night club in altman's restaurant.

Three provocative short stories. An American in Paris seduces a young man only to have the tables turned; a tourist recovering from an accident is alone but far from lonely; and an exchange student decides to intervene when he sees the woman in the opposite apartment being tied, gagged and beaten by her lover.

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.

Ben and Raz are painstakingly pursuing their desire to have a child, and the migrant neighbourhood where this gay couple has set up their new flat is on the up. But a conflict over a newly planted tree in the city brings deep-seated prejudices to light.

Salam, an inexperienced young Palestinian man, becomes a writer on a popular soap opera after a chance meeting with an Israeli soldier. His creative career is on the rise - until the soldier and the show's financial backers disagree about how the show should end, and Salam is caught in the middle.

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.

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.

A young New York woman, devastated to find out that her husband has been cheating on her, decides to hop a plane to Paris to get away. However, she falls asleep on the plane, misses her connection, and winds up in Israel, with no money, no luggage and no friends.

Joy can't let go of her ex, but doesn't seem to be able to fall for the new guy. In the meantime she keeps having casual sex with strangers.

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 story takes place in Haifa, Israel, in 1979, during three days before the Shabbat. A young woman trying to raise three children, work from home, and observe the strict Moroccan traditions of her family finds herself at constant odds with her husband and her brothers, who want her to stay married and leave behind the notions of being loved and free.

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.

Hitparkut (Dissolution) combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black and white realism to explore the condition of violence which permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot is Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played by Israeli actor Didi Fire

As in previous editions, lesbian filmmakers were asked to visualize their conceptions and observations of gay eroticism and sexuality, just as, conversely, gay filmmakers were asked to explore lesbian love in the Israeli capital.

David is a garage electrician, who dreamt all of his life of becoming a magician, but had no luck in it. His girlfriend Batya wants an ordinary life, but David is still looking for his dream, so he links up with Romanian immigrant Shimon, who is an expert magician.

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.