9 Star Hotel
Director: Ido Haar
Logline: Slipping through the predawn darkness over highways, through traffic and across the border, Palestinian construction workers go to work clandestinely in Israel every day. Raw, handheld photography follows workers who build their own border shanty community to enter Israel more easily, with no choice but to risk their lives simply to earn a living.
Synopsis: 9 Star Hotel introduces the audience to a cadre of Palestinian men who have built a transient community on the Israeli border, comprised of jerry-built huts and tiny, sarcophagus-like sleeping compartments. The men leave these quarters and systematically cross the border each morning before dawn, to work illegally at construction jobs in Israel – risking their safety and their lives to simply draw a regular income. Throughout, the workers stick close together (Haar suggests that the circumstances actually engender tighter social bonds between them) and evince a surprising sense of humor, tenacity and resilience. Meanwhile, constant hopes for improved circumstances in the future belie their lingering fears of being discovered and shot or arrested by Israeli authorities.
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