Twelve-year-old Mussa won’t speak and no one knows why. He is an African refugee living in Tel Aviv, and for the past five years he’s been bussed from his troubled neighborhood to an upscale private school. Moussa’s Israeli classmates are his best friends, but he chooses to communicate with them only through gestures. Despite the bond he shares with his friends and teacher, Mussa is alone; his parents struggle to make ends meet and are seldom home, leaving Mussa with his voiceless thoughts and a real fear of being deported back to Ethiopia.

National Diploma follows a group of young Congolese high school students who are about to sit the exam for their National Diploma, the “Final Exams”, in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo.