Twelve-year-old Mauro (Michel Joelsas) is obsessed with Brazil's soccer team. He plays a table soccer game and collects the cards of the players on the team. It is 1970 and the country is reeling under a repressive military dictatorship. Mauro's politically active Jewish father (Eduardo Moreira) and Catholic mother (Simone Spoladore) have decided to go underground and so they take their son to a Jewish neighborhood in San Paulo to stay with his grandfather, a barber. Mauro is told to tell everyone that his parents are on vacation. His father promises to return in time for the World Cup tournament. But after his parents leave, Mauro learns that his grandfather has died of a heart attack.

The Gentile is taken in by Shlomo (Germano Haiut), a Polish Jew who lives next door. He is a pious bachelor who works at the synagogue and feels uneasy about dealing with this young stranger. But after the rabbi tells him that the boy has been left on his doorstep by God, he realizes that it is his responsibility to look after this pint-sized Moses who is alone in a strange place. Knowing that Mauro is waiting for a phone call from his parents, Shlomo sets up a special link-up for the telephone next door. But he slaps Mauro one day when he finds him wearing his prayer shawl while playing in the hallway.

Things brighten a bit for the boy when the members of the synagogue invite him for lunch at their various apartments. Mauro is also befriended by Hanna (Daniela Piepsyk), a entrepreneurial little Jewish girl who sells the local boys peeks at the women trying on clothes in her mother's dress shop. He finds a surrogate mother in Irene (Liliana Castro) who works at a local bar; he feels right at home there when everyone gathers around the TV set to watch Pele and Tostao in the important soccer games. But Mauro's chief hope is to be reunited with his parents.

Writer and director Cao Hamburger has created an emotionally touching drama about the spiritual practice of hospitality by the members of a Jewish synagogue who take care of a Gentile boy as if he were one of their own. The relationship between the gruff Shlomo and Mauro unspools slowly, and they respond to each other without much fanfare. It is also delightful to watch how the resilient 12 year old finds ways to assuage his loneliness and stave off his very real fears of abandonment.

Our hearts go out to all exiles who find themselves in strange places with only meager resources. The filmmaker reminds us that although sports can provide plenty of thrills and communal solidarity, they fall far short of the meaning and connection of parental love. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is Brazil's official selection for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Special DVD features include a featurette "Inside the Movie"; interviews with the cast and crew; and extended scenes and outtakes.