Sarit Vino-Elad

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.

An eighty-year-old man's body is found with three stab wounds to the chest and a number tattooed along his forearm. Amnon, a police detective and second generation Holocaust survivor, is reluctantly assigned to the case. As the plot weaves between the past and present, their stories unfold.

Yoram, a 50-year-old veterinarian living in Tel-Aviv, is forced to re-examine his relationship with his adolescent daughter Roni, after she wishes to end her life. He decides to take her on a journey to visit her mother’s family, a process of self and mutual discovery in a primordial desert land enveloping the Dead Sea.

On the day he is released from prison, Yisarael appears on the doorstep of the woman whose life he had changed. A weird relationship develops between the two.

'Shoelaces' tells the story of a complicated relationship between an aging father and his special-needs son, whom he abandoned while he was still a young boy. Reuben's (60) kidney's are failing and his son Gadi (35), wants to donate one of his own kidney's to help save his father's life. However, the transplant committee objects to the procedure claiming that Rueben, acting as Gadi's sole legal guardian, does not have the right to authorize such an invasive procedure. Gadi, who recently lost his mother, is afraid of losing his father as well. He feels he finally has the chance to do something meaningful; to become a man and stand on his own. He's furious with the committee's decision and sets out to fight for his right to save his father's life. Through the film's portrayal of a relationship full of love, rejection and co-dependency, it manages to shed some light and question the importance of human life, human connection and if life is even possible without it either one of them.

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.