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.
Acting
Mili Avital's face does what pages of dialogue can't.
Direction
Ayelet Menahemi balances sorrow and absurdity with surgical precision.
Writing
Dialogue sparse, silence loaded — every glance earns its keep.
Director
Ayelet Menahemi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Noodle quietly documents Israel's hidden Chinese migrant worker population, a community rarely portrayed in Israeli cinema. Director Ayelet Menahemi spent months researching deportation procedures to ground the film in bureaucratic reality.
Baoqi Chen spoke no Hebrew and minimal English during filming; his confusion in scenes is often completely authentic. Mili Avital reportedly improvised extensively in their shared scenes to work around the genuine language barrier.
IL
