The film was composed of several interviews with different Palestinian refugees including children , women , old people , and militants from the refugee camps in Lebanon . In the interviews Malas questions his subjects about their dreams at night . Through their answers , the film attempts to reveal the underlying subconsciousness of the Palestinian refugee . The dreams always converge on Palestine ; a woman recounts her dreams about winning the war ; a '' fedai '' of bombardment and martyrdom ; and one man tells of a dream where he meets and is ignored by Gulf emirs . According to Rebecca Porteous , the film constructs " the psychology of dispossession ; the daily reality behind those slogans of nationhood , freedom , land and resistance , for people who have lost all of these things , except their recourse to the last . " Filming began in 1980 , and the first stage was completed in September 1981 . The film was shot between the Sabra , Shatila , Bourj el-Barajneh , Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh refugee camps . During filming Malas lived in the camps and conducted interviews with more than 400 people . However , the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 , which claimed the lives of several people he interviewed , shocked Malas and he stopped working on the project . " I was paralyzed with grief and anxiety for the friends I had made . I had to do something else and so I turned my attention to '' City Dreams '' , " Malas reportedly said of the event . The critical success of his feature film , '' Ahlam al-Madina '' ( " Dreams of a City " ) , allowed him to return to the project after five years . In 1986 he edited the many hours of footage he had into a final cut of 45 minutes
Sabra and Shatila massacre
Sabra and Shatila massacre
The Dream (1987 film)