Among one of the first buys at the Tribeca film fest, Koch Lorber Films has picked up the U.S. rights to the Israeli/Palestinian border-patrol.
9 Star Hotel from Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar gained the trust of a group of nomadic young men whom he observed fleeing from police, risking their lives to cross highways at night, sleeping in makeshift hovels – a dramatic contrast to the luxury housing they build by day. “We think backwards – we never think forward. We are like scavengers, like those who harvest olives after the locust,” one of his subjects confesses with lyrical simplicity. This is a devastating cinema verite portrait of young men caught in an economic and political maelstrom not of their own making – their dreams subsumed by the hard reality of day-to-day survival.
The film is set for a a May theatrical release in New York, with a nationwide rollout in select markets.
