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LOS ANGELES: Irish director Stephen Gerard Kelly’s first documentary “In The Shadow of Beirut,” officially selected for the Oscars, exposes the distressing and tragic reality of the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon.

The film is listed in two categories: Feature Documentary and International Feature. It is timely, shedding light on another story of injustice in the Arab world.

“With never having had a camera out for three years, at the three-year mark and having gained trust and the confidence of people from the areas where the film is set, then people started to ask me to film in times of celebration, be it a childbirth, be it a wedding. A wedding was the first time that I really was out with the camera filming.”

“When I showed people from the wedding party the footage afterwards, they were saying to me, ‘God, Steve, this is like a film. You know, it looks like something out of Hollywood,’” he recalled.

Kelly made friends with several people living in Sabra and Shatila, two Palestinian camps that were subject to a devastating raid in 1982. Kelly learnt Arabic and was able to get an intimate look at four people whose stories represent harrowing deprivation.

“The power of this film is that it’s not a political film. It’s a film about love, about the importance of family,” the director said. “The film is from very diverse communities where there are Lebanese people, Syrian people, Palestinian people, Lebanese nomadic people, all trying to provide for their families and for their communities and help each other out.”

Kelly said he learned a great deal during shooting and would “take on board what I do as I go into my next films.”

“I want to stay in it, in the documentary filmmaking world, and I want to do more impactful, meaningful human life stories,” he added. “You know that in some small way, try to bring us all together and try and make us care a little bit more.”