Israel

11-year-old Igor visits his ornithologist father and the two start a documentary project together capturing the birth of a young crane. As the Russian cranes migrate south to Africa, Igor’s father takes off to pursue the birds. When Igor’s mother announces her plan to move to Israel to pursue her musical career, Igor must also emigrate. Finding it hard to get used to Israeli life, the boy tracks the cranes via his father’s website. A new friend, Vered, starts following the crane blog and others come on board. Inspired to action, Igor creates a bird sanctuary.

This latest humanist drama from Eran Riklis, director of The Lemon Tree, centers on a 12-year-old Palestinian refugee and an Israeli fighter pilot shot down over Beirut. The pair forms an unlikely alliance as they make their way across the war-torn country to the Israeli border in 1982. Orphaned Fahed longs to fulfill his father’s dream of planting an olive tree at their ancestral home inside Israel while pilot Yoni is fleeing for his life.