On My Own (1988)

Original title: אל עצמי

The film’s protagonist is Zion Cohen (Arik Ohana), a boy who grew up in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Beit She’an and was sent at the age of eight by his grandmother—with the help of a social worker—to a foster family in Haifa in the late 1970s. The foster family is the Sharonis—a well-off family consisting of the mother (Tchia Danon), a psychologist by profession, the father Elimelech (Roberto Pollak), and their young son Nir (Roie Bar-Natan), who do everything in their power to support Zion. The film depicts the various difficulties Zion encounters in his new life as a foster child and his feeling of not belonging; he often tries to return to his childhood neighborhood and his friends, something his grandmother and the social worker try to keep him from doing.