Illegal immigrants are the invisible men of the global labor pool, non-entities in their host countries whose shadowy status reduces them to a glimpse in the public’s peripheral vision. Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar shared this limited view until the day he discovered Palestinian workers lurking in the thick expanse of pine trees not far from his village, which sits between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Mr. Haar decided to expand that glimpse, turning his camera toward these tightly knit groups of men, whose existence on the margins adjacent to suburban construction sites fosters a unique kind of brotherhood. The “9 Star Hotel” refers to the makeshift shelters the men construct, using work-site refuse to create tiny settlements. There, weary after long days drilling and plastering together future luxury apartments, they do what men do on any frontier: share simple meals around a campfire, sing, tell jokes and stories, and reminisce with a keen sense of longing and a looming melancholy.

Shooting in a basic, cinema-verité style, Mr. Haar lets his subjects speak for themselves. He obviously cultivated their trust, and digs in close for what is sometimes a painfully intimate portrait of grime and grind. By necessity, the work has a scrappy, spontaneous feel: When the men are running across a busy highway, stepping quick to avoid any unwanted notice, the camera runs with them. The lens is as vulnerable as they are.

The workers’ own analysis of their situation is self-knowing and unflinching: It’s impossible to win, but they stick it out anyway. There are constant alerts when the police or military sweeps through, and creature comfort is in short supply — even though the workers prove amazingly resourceful at everything from culinary endeavors to generating electricity.

But something as simple as a brief rain shower becomes a major hassle, and accidents on the job are a catastrophe. Still, the bond among the men sustains them. Ahmad, a young man whose pensive mood often is brightened by his sense of humor, attracts much of the focus. He’s enterprising, diving into dumpsters to glean the disposable bounty of his unwitting Israeli neighbors. He clowns around with a fedora he’s discovered, pretending to be a pious Jew one moment, while his buddy mimes a cowboy. Ahmad brags that he’s cornering the market on shoes.

His friend Muhammad offers a contrast in personality. Older and sadder, he captures his peers’ situation in a few simple words that come as he muses about their mutual upbringing. They feel trapped by tradition. “We think backwards, we never think forward,” he says of the Palestinians. “We are like scavengers, like those who harvest olives after the locust.”

It’s a tough, realistic assessment, made with the kind of honesty that doesn’t disguise envy of those from wealthier Arab states, who can enjoy talk of cars and girls. For Muhammad’s people, it is always work — and a hollow sense of being constrained both by Israeli policies and by the mentality of their own culture. Mr. Haar’s documentary is conceived as such a thorough close-up that any broader observations fall outside its frame of reference. This may be problematic for viewers expecting a pointed political statement, but Mr. Haar’s aesthetic choices favor human compassion over polemical gestures. This may limit the ambitions of “9 Star Hotel,” but not its emotional impact, which has registered strongly enough to make the film a hit in Israel.

Through June 5 (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8110).