Shai Fredo

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 beautiful and spoilt Yerusalem had a wonderful life in Paris as the wife of the Eritrean Ambassador. Due to political changes, her husband is arrested, and she has to run for her life, finding herself in a refugee shelter in south Tel Aviv, where nobody cares who she was. Even there, at the skirts of town, among the desperation and poverty, she does not give up and struggles with all her might to regain her former status. A torrid love affair with an affluent Israeli architect brings her closer to her target until she discovers that he will never leave his family, and that her fate is doomed.

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.

Israeli diplomat Asher Naim travels to Ethiopia to act as negotiator for the release of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews, hoping to save them from a country plagued by famine and civil war. This seemingly altruistic mission, however, is thrown into doubt and skepticism when Naim begins to suspect the rescue mission might be a publicity stunt for his home country, and the Ethiopians wonder whether they have been little more than pawns. At the same time that the escalating situation on the ground becomes combustible, Naim’s crisis of faith grows.