9 Star Hotel (2007)

In "9 Star Hotel," the Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar draws us into the precarious world of young Palestinian construction workers scrabbling to survive in and around the Israeli city of Modiin. Irregularly and illegally employed, the men hide in the wooded hills above the city, sleeping in shelters made from scraps of Sheetrock and constantly on the alert for Israeli security forces. Accompanied by Mr. Haar and his hand-held camera, the workers sneak across hazardous highways at night, flee police raids and speculate on an uncertain future. The cheerful Ahmed, nicknamed the Merchant by his peers, was once a night watchman in an Israeli building. Now he scavenges for garbage and argues with his friend Muhammad, a thoughtful day laborer who worries about the Palestinians' lack of progress. "We think backward, we never think forward," he says, exemplifying the film's bipartisan tone. "9 Star Hotel" may strive to make the political personal, but it does so via subjects who seem just as willing to question their own culture as the one that excludes them.