Best Israeli romance movies
A curated collection of popular romance movies from Israel.
Worlds Apart (1980)
Worlds Apart (1980)
After fighting the Arab armies, Assaf, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with an American living in the Arab district of Jerusalem. One day, he believes he recognizes a wanted terrorist.
Strangers (2007)
Strangers (2007)
Six days in the lives of an Israeli living in a kibbutz and a Palestinian living in Paris, which starts with an accidental meeting in the Berlin Subway during the World cup finals, will change them completely.
Seven Minutes in Heaven (2008)
Seven Minutes in Heaven (2008)
Galia, a young 27 year old woman injured in the bombing of a bus in Jerusalem, will start searching for the man who saved her life. A journey that will reveal to her an unsuspected truth.
Minotaur (1997)
Minotaur (1997)
Alex Abramov is Mossad secret agent looking after some bad guys. He falls in love with young music student Thea, but can not reveal himself and sends her gifts secretly. Thea first thinks that it must be another student, G.R., who sends gifts, and bad guys, knowing about Alex's feelings towards Thea, attack G.R. by mistake.
Obsession (2011)
Obsession (2011)
Raymond Amsalem embodies the image of a weak and submissive woman, whose husband is a drinker and gambler and who cheats on her with other women. Her son is serving in the IDF and refrained from returning home for holidays, her daughter ran away, and the little boy is watching his family collapse into itself.
Is That You? (2014)
Is That You? (2014)
IS THAT YOU? Is the story of RONNIE, 60 year old Israeli film projectionist, who has been fired from his job and is going now to the U.S. in a search for RACHEL, the love of his youth IS THAT YOU? Is a romantic, road trip journey to 'The Road Not Taken' in life created by Award Winning filmmaker Dani Menkin (HBO Cinemax-39 Pounds of Love, Je Taime, I Love You Terminal, Dolphin Boy).
Turn Left at the End of the World (2004)
Turn Left at the End of the World (2004)
The year is 1968. To a small town in the south of Israel, mostly inhabited by Moroccan immigrants, a few families from India arrive, searching for a better life in the west. The instinct driven Moroccans patronize the "black" Indians, while the quiet Indians see the Moroccans as Ignorant and coarse. In this cultural war two girls, Moroccan and Indian, discover the sexual revolution of the 60's.
The Dybbuk of the Holy Apple Field (1997)
The Dybbuk of the Holy Apple Field (1997)
This mythic love story set in a timeless, lavishly colorful and mystical Jerusalem incorporates hard rock, striking set design, computer-generated imagery and modern-day tensions between the secular and the Orthodox worlds. Hanan, a handsome young traveler - who has pierced ears and wears grungy flannel shirts - falls in love with Lea, the beautiful daughter of a leader in the religious community. Unbeknownst to the couple, a deal was struck, years earlier, in which they were promised to each other by their fathers. When Hanan consults with a master of Kabbala, a set of mysteriously forbidden eleventh-century texts unleashes untold powers, merging the erotic with the divine and affirming love's infinite potential to transcend all obstacles. The lovers are played by Yehezkel Lazarov (Waltz with Bashir) and Ayelet Z'urer (Angels & Demons; Vantage Point). (from sfjff.org)
To Take A Wife (2004)
To Take A Wife (2004)
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.
Three (2018)
Three (2018)
Tom, a young architect from Tel Aviv, accepts his partner Nimrod's offer of a threesome with Or. The meeting with Or changes the couple's relationship.
Five Hours from Paris (2009)
Five Hours from Paris (2009)
Only 5 flight hours from Paris, in a working-class suburb of Tel Aviv, two people meet. He is a bred-and-born Israeli and she is a Russian immigrant. He is a taxi driver and she is a music teacher. He has no aspirations. She gave up hers long ago. He is afraid of flying and she is about to fly away. What are the odds of them ending up together?
Je T'aime, I Love You Terminal (2010)
Je T'aime, I Love You Terminal (2010)
The film follows Ben, who is traveling from Israel to New York to marry his girlfriend but misses his connection in Prague. There he meets Emma, an attractive free spirited girl. During the next 24 hours a friendship develops between the two and they find themselves reconsidering their original travel plans and re-evaluating their lives and relationships.
Yana's Friends (1999)
Yana's Friends (1999)
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.
99 Dizengoff Street (1979)
99 Dizengoff Street (1979)
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.
I Love You Rosa (1972)
I Love You Rosa (1972)
This story centers on the Jewish practice that requires an unmarried brother to marry the childless widow of his dead brother. In this story the younger brother is only 12 years old when his brother dies. The requirement is avoided by a legal fiction, but as time passes in the story, the situation changes.
People That Are Not Me (2016)
People That Are Not Me (2016)
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.
Love in Suspenders (2019)
Love in Suspenders (2019)
Tami is a widow in her 60s and Beno is a widower in his 70s. She is optimistic, always smiling, and still talking to her husband who has been dead for a few years already. Beno is tougher on the outside, but also still suffering from the loss of his wife. Tami and her husband were successful singers so now she lives comfortably in a beautiful retirement home. He, on the other hand, is finding it hard to pay the monthly rent. Notwithstanding their differences in lifestyle and personality, and their interfering offspring and neighbors, they eventually fall in love.
Villa Touma (2014)
Villa Touma (2014)
Three unmarried aristocratic Christian sisters from Ramallah have shut themselves in their villa clinging desperately to their former glory, until their orphan niece, Badia, walks into their life and turns their world upside down.
The Property (2024)
The Property (2024)
Two months after the death of her son, Regina (83) travels to Poland with her granddaughter Mika (30). The trip’s stated purpose is to retrieve the family’s property confiscated during World War II. But Regina has a secret ulterior motive: to find her first love, whom she was forced to leave 70 years ago.
The Traitor (2009)
The Traitor (2009)
Tomer and Shmulik are a couple. One evening, during a causal supper, one of them announces he wants to break up. Pain takes over their intimacy and the night takes an unexpected turn.
Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive (2020)
Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive (2020)
A black comedy which follows Ronen Matalon's journey to overcome his anxiety of terror attacks. Ronen uses writing and guiding a tour of terror-attack sites along Jerusalem's Jaffa Street to try and break free from his trauma.
Yellow Asphalt (2001)
Yellow Asphalt (2001)
Three stories set among the Bedouin of Jahalin in the hills of the Judean desert. On an almost deserted highway, two Israeli truckers strike a Bedouin lad accidentally. Before they can flee, the boy's people appear and circle the truckers. Retribution? In a tent, elders judge a woman seeking divorce; she wants to leave with her young daughters. They deny the suit. That night she gathers her girls and runs. Her husband pursues her. The Bedouin maid of a married Israeli hot-house farmer is discovered in adultery; with her life in danger, she seeks protection from her lover. He turns her away and involves a Bedouin farmhand in disposing of her. What tribal justice awaits?
Late Summer Blues (1987)
Late Summer Blues (1987)
A group of close friends celebrate the bittersweet changes coming to their lives during the summer of their high-school graduation: adult responsibilities, adult romance -- and the soberingly adult fact that some of their number are being drafted into the Israeli army. This has very much the feel of a high-school beach-party movie -- with music, and in Hebrew -- until a sudden and disturbingly realistic reminder of their own mortality finally slashes through the kids' cheerful, close-knit obliviousness.
Fictitious Marriage (1988)
Fictitious Marriage (1988)
Eldad is about to go abroad, but changes his mind at the last minute. Instead of going home to Jerusalem, he disguises himself and takes a cheap hotel room in Tel Aviv. There he meets the receptionist Judy who he makes believe he'll marry so she can go to American with him and get a working visa there. In another disguise he is mistaken for a deaf-mute Arab and joins a group of them both at their Israeli construction site and back in their village.
Don't Let the Night End (2019)
Don't Let the Night End (2019)
After an injury upends her ambitious career as a dancer, Mia escapes her life in Tel Aviv for a temporary stay in Brooklyn. Looking for meaning and a new lease on life, she accepts a cat-sitting gig and seduces its owner, hoping to bring back the part of her she fears to have lost forever.
Temptation (2002)
Temptation (2002)
Daphne's life is peaceful. She has solid marriage with a successful lawyer, two charming children and a nice local bookshop. Recently her father passed away and left her a good deal of money, but besides that it's the same old routine. This routine is about to abruptly change when Daphne befriends with Ami...
Gotta Have Heart (1997)
Gotta Have Heart (1997)
Young love blossoms amid the inhabitants of a small town in Israel in this gay fantasy. Guri want to relocate to Tel Aviv before he's "outed". Nohav want to win a local song contest and who can tell what stud Merito wants?
The Lover (1985)
The Lover (1985)
Adam is trying to fix his marriage but both his wife Asia and teenage daughter Dafi are too busy with their lovers.
God's Sandbox (2002)
God's Sandbox (2002)
A successful author, Liz, searches for her daughter, Rachel, in the Sinai Desert. There she meets a Bedouin storyteller who relays the unusual love story of a Western tourist and the son of a Bedouin Sheik named Najim. Their relationship is torn apart when the American is exposed to a tribal ritual.