[4] 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.
[4] 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.
[5] The critical success of his feature film, Ahlam al-Madina ("Dreams of a City"), allowed him to return to the project after five years.
[7] The film was eventually released in 1987[5] to "great acclaim" both in the Arab world and Europe where it was shown on television in France and England.
[7] The Dream won first prize at the 1987 Cannes International Audio Visual Festival (FIPA) but was not widely distributed thereafter.