In Israel’s occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans work ille­gal­ly as con­struc­tion labour­ers. At night they sleep on the hill­crests in impro­vised huts and sleep­ing cubi­cles, a stark con­trast to the luxury apart­ment com­plex­es they build by day. In 9 STAR HOTEL, the film­mak­er fol­lows Ahmed and Muham­mad, one a merry col­lec­tor of found objects, the other a philo­soph­i­cal crit­i­cas­t­er of the Pales­tin­ian char­ac­ter (“We think back­ward. We never think for­ward.”). Togeth­er, they share food, belong­ing and sto­ries, and live under the con­stant threat of get­ting arrest­ed – police, sol­diers, and the secret ser­vice are all tire­less­ly on the alert for ille­gal work­ers. With raw, hand­held images, this touch­ing film doc­u­ments friend­ship, nos­tal­gia and the uncom­pro­mis­ing urge to survive.