9 Star Hotel

Winner of best documentary awards at festivals worldwide, the Israeli film 9 Star Hotel is an intimate, emotionally powerful look at a handful of Palestinian laborers who slip across the Israeli border every day to work illegally on high-rise construction sites then huddle in the hills by night awaiting police sweeps.

Alternately heart-breaking and hopeful, the film is a look at life among young, poorly educated men caught between Israeli exploitation and Palestinian Authority corruption—whose dreams of a better life are the same as those of others trapped in similar circumstances throughout the world. (78 mins., video)

This screening is part of an occasional year-long series marking and commemorating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.

Trailer: