Shmulik Calderone

An intelligent social issues drama, Manpower sketches a portrait of four men in crisis. Moving between scathing realism and subtle irony, the film raises questions of belonging and uprooting, exile and emigration, home and family. Meir Cohen is a decorated police officer yet he barely earns a living. His new assignment to deport African migrant workers teaches him that foreigners aren’t the only ones with no future in his country. Other plotlines intertwine with Meir’s story: an Israeli-Filipino boy fighting for recognition; a taxi driver whose children are migrating to a distant country; and a veteran migrant worker who’s forced to decide whether to leave or to hide until trouble passes.

Adam is a Christian Arab living in Nazareth - member of a vanishing minority within a minority in the Holy Land and the Middle East. His wife Lamia is a strong, beautiful and progressive Arab woman, who runs a foundation for women's rights.