It follows a swimming coach, who returns to Israel from the United States after his father's death, and his childhood friend's fiancée, who is a florist.

Eli arrives in Tel Aviv and meets a neighbor from across the street, Moti (Moni Moshonov).

She visits Yotam and tries to get him to respond to various scents, including the sage he loved to put in his tea, but he shows no reaction.

After ten months, Eli asks Iris for help designing the garden at his father's old house.

Iris searches for information about Eli and his father and discovers a case from 1998 in which a police officer's wife committed suicide.

They eat together, and Eli tells her he found a job as a swimming instructor for children at a local pool.

On another day, Eli asks Iris for help designing a seating area in the garden, and she suggests he join her on a trip to the nursery where she buys flowers.

They sit at a bar, and Eli encounters Moshiko (Or Botbul), a figure from his past who offers him financial proposals related to his appearance.

She shows him pictures from their apartment, and he recognizes the city depicted in one of them, speaking for the first time and saying, "Jaffa."

One day, Eli comes to Iris's shop, tells her he is leaving to go back to the United States, and asks her not to contact him anymore.

Orna tells Iris that Eli was a child abused by his father, who was not arrested due to his position in the police.

With the escalation of violence from his father, Eli ran away from home to the central bus station in Tel Aviv, where he used drugs and did terrible things, according to Orna, to obtain money.

Graizer conceived of the film in Chicago when he visited the United States for the first time when The Cakemaker was invited to a festival.

According to Graizer, the title America symbolises "a place of longing" and "a distant dream" he had as a child growing up in Israel in the 1980s.

[3] Neil Young of Screen International wrote, "while heart-tugging sentiment is not entirely shunned ... it is handled with sufficient tact and sensitivity to heighten rather than cheapen the story's overall impact."