Manpower

With restraint, compassion and an invigorating dose of grace, young Israeli director Noam Kaplan crafts a portrait of four men struggling to maintain their dignity. Meir, an outstanding police officer who’s put in charge of a special operation targeting foreign workers, can’t even afford brand-name toilet paper. Minibus driver Haim grieves quietly when his beloved son, daughter-in-law and grandchild emigrate to Canada. Erez, the son of a Filipina, fights tooth and nail for his dream of serving in an IDF combat unit, while Bamba, a Nigerian housecleaner, believes hard work and good behavior will protect him from deportation. As the film’s disparate storylines snake together and apart, the actors deliver impressively understated performances that animate sparkling moments of humor as well as gut-wrenching scenes of heartbreak. Manpower deals with uncomfortable realities of 21st century life in Israel and beyond: socioeconomic disparity and downward mobility, immigration and xenophobia and the erosion of community. It’s a stirring movie rooted in a gentle but resolute humanism. —Hagar Scher