The Sundance Institute announced yesterday that they are awarding grants to 23 nonfiction film projects that will receive financial and creative support from the Sundance Documentary Film Program (DFP). One of the projects is directed by POV alum, Bernardo Ruiz, who co-produced Alex Rivera’s The Sixth Section (POV 2003) and worked on the first installment […]

POV’s Executive Director Simon Kilmurry shares some exciting news about POV alum Ido Haar. For those of you close to Westchester County, New York, POV alum Ido Haar, the filmmaker of 9 Star Hotel (POV 2008), will be featured as the third International Filmmaker-in-Residence at Jacob Burns Film Center’s Media Arts Lab in Pleasantville. Ido […]

Ido Haar is the director of 9 Star Hotel. After the film aired on POV, viewers wrote in with questions for Ido. Read on for his responses. Allen asks: Thanks for the film. I found similarities between the Palestinian men and Mexican migrant workers in America. Is this something you thought about as you were […]

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup. Today, he muses on the most recent POV film. As I watched 9 Star Hotel, I was overcome by this strange feeling of déjà vu. I was captivated by the slice-of-sad-life story about the young Palestinian men […]

9 Star Hotel is the facetious name that Palestinian construction workers give to the pile of rocks that marks their clandestine nightly abode — a group of cardboard enclosures and tin-covered huts hidden in the brush-covered hills above the Israeli town of Modi’in. It is also the name of this week’s POV film about the […]

Israeli director Ido Haar grew up in a village on the edge of a pine forest halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. When he went home to visit his parents, he often saw men running frantically across the highway. He says “the fear in their eyes haunted me, and I wanted to find out where […]

On July 22nd, POV will broadcast 9 Star Hotel by Ido Haar, which takes a unique look at the lives of Palestinian workers. Here’s a sneak peek. 9 Star Hotel documents the lives of a group of young Palestinian men working illegally as construction laborers in the Israeli city of Modi’in. Caught between Israeli security […]