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9 STAR HOTEL
Photographed, Written, & Directed: Ido Haar.
Produced by: Edna Kowarsky & Elinor Kowarsky.
Edited by: Haar & Era Lapid.
Language: Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Israel. 78 mins. Not Rated.
Released by: Koch Lorber Films.

Planned as Israel’s fourth largest metropolis, the city of Modi'in is rising between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, designed by renowned architect/planner Moshe Safdie in his distinctive concrete Lego-block style. All that concrete mixing and construction attracts a swarm of desperate and unemployed Palestinians to illegally seek work in Israel at the same time that nation is systematically building an imposing security wall.

Director Ido Haar followed a group of Palestinian men hustling along their arduous trek from the West Bank, across dangerous highways, and skirting patrols to their sojourn in the hills around Modi'in. Meeting up with other workers along the way, they share tips on checkpoints and advice on which particular soldiers to watch. (Their comments about women soldiers at the border reflect the attitudes portrayed in the recent Israeli feature film Close To Home.)

The men’s names and indicators of time passing only come out gradually through conversations. They discuss the countdown to when the wall will be completed and they will no longer be able to sneak through, making them more and more anxious to evade capture and make as much money as possible. Despite the chilly rainy season turning a shallow stream into a river, yet more workers cross, recalling images of Mexican migrants at the Rio Grande. That their casually flung backpacks could just as well contain bombs, as fictionally portrayed in Paradise Now, instead of food and clothes reinforces why the wall they dread is being built. But the sheer numbers scurrying across the hills also spark a hope that those who just want to work for a living in peace could some day be a vocal force against the bombers.

The laborers’ makeshift huts assembled from scavenged materials, ironically referenced to in the title, sharply contrast the upscale high- and low-rise housing they help build. There are, of course, no safety precautions for them, and illnesses or injuries requiring hospitalization only bring well-founded fear of deportation – health and capture crises are vividly caught on film. Haar is so intimately involved with the workers that he (with his bouncing camera) runs with them as they avoid raids and are chased by various police, army, and security services, day and night. Occasionally, officials ban his filming; other times, he’s left alone safely on the side of the road while workers are taken away.

There’s only a hint of religious observance or nationalistic fervor among the workers; only one is glimpsed at morning prayers while a few at the construction site wear the distinctive checked kaffiyeh head covering. They just as easily sing pop tunes as anthems to martyrs. A couple of times their conversations give unusual insight into the unique plight of young Arab men, including regrets at lost educational opportunities. Amidst the universal braggadocio of men bonding in groups and some preening for the camera, they point out that as soon as a boy starts getting interested in sex at around age 13, their fathers arrange an engagement to a cousin. They wistfully hope to choose a second wife on their own, if they can afford to support a larger family, even as some solely support their siblings.

While fiction films have portrayed illegal workers from poor countries migrating to booming economies – including Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1982 Moonlighting about Polish construction workers in London, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s 1996 La Promesse set in Belgium, and the Pakistanis in Syriana – this is an unusually intimate real-life portrait of the personalities, camaraderie, fears, and hopes of men who are otherwise considered by the media to be just the flotsam of politics and economics. Nora Lee Mandel
May 23, 2007