Since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, a slew of nonfiction films have been made not only to document the crimes committed by the Bashar al-Assad regime, but also to explore the myriad shades of an increasingly complicated conflict that is constantly oversimplified in the mainstream media. Some of the most notable of these documentaries include Talal Derki’s “Return to Homs,” Liwaa Yazji’s “Haunted,” Mohammed Ali Atassi and Ziad Homsi’s “Our Terrible Country,” and Ossama Mohammed’s “Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait.”

No film about this catastrophe, however, has managed to capture the public’s imagination like the British filmmaker Sean McAllister’s latest documentary, “A Syrian Love Story,” a searing, deeply felt study of the disintegrating marriage of two Syrian activists failing to cope with the unpredictable effects of the war. After winning the Grand Jury Award for best film at this year’s Sheffield International Documentary Festival, the British Film Institute-backed production met with rapturous acclaim upon its September release in the United Kingdom. It garnered glowing reviews from almost every publication in the country and is set for worldwide distribution. “A Syrian Love Story” could well be the quintessential document of the Syrian war to date.

The unexpected success of the film is the fruit of an arduous journey that saw McAllister follow Amer Dauod and Raghda Hassan, the couple at the heart of the story, and their sons for five years in Syria, Lebanon and France. McAllister is no stranger to the Middle East. His film “The Liberace of Baghdad” (2005) looks at post-war Iraq from the perspective of a pianist attempting to start a new and better life in the United States, and “The Reluctant Revolutionary” (2012) traces the Yemeni revolution through the eyes of a tour guide. McAllister’s relationship with Syria began in 2009, when the government invited a number of foreign journalists to sell the country as the next tourist hotspot.

McAllister’s interest in political prisoners led him to Amer, a devoted father and husband awaiting the release of his wife, who had been detained by the government. Amer and Raghda had met and fallen in love in prison, and after their release, they ventured to start a family without abandoning their political cause. Raghda was detained a second time for writing a book critical of Assad, leaving Amer to bear the brunt of raising their sons by himself.