To Be Like Avi is the coming-of-age story of three friends, refugees who fled Africa and left their families behind. They study in the Galilee and dream of following in the footsteps of Avi (formally Ibrahim), the only refugee who somehow obtained an Israeli citizenship and enlisted in the IDF. The film follows them during their senior high-school year. At the end of the year they will find out whether they can achieve the impossible and join the IDF or be deported back to their countries – and to a certain sentence of death.

The trio deals with familiar teen-age topics like falling in and out of love, tradition and progress, idealism and reality. However, their story unfolds in a complex social and political reality and highlights the problems of the African refugees’ in Israel.