Little kids line up in white graduation caps and gowns. Family members pose for formal photos at a wedding. Cousins laugh as they cut into the frosting of a giant birthday cake.

These scenes from Amar Shah’s childhood flash across the screen in a new film. And they share something in common.

All the photos were taken at motels owned by Indian immigrant families.

Shah grew up in that world.

His parents were in the gas station business. Family members and close friends owned motels. But Shah didn’t want to follow in their footsteps.

“I saw it as rough, blue-collar work,” he says, “and I felt a little embarrassed by it.”

But now Shah, 45, says he sees things differently. And he’s hoping others will, too.

A new short film he co-directed and narrates, “The Patel Motel Story,” premiered at New York’s Tribeca Festival in June. And this month, it’s showing at festivals across the US.

The film begins with what Shah calls a “mind-blowing” detail about Indian immigrants and their descendants: “We control over 60% of hotels and motels in the US — from the roadside motels all the way up to the Four Seasons — even though we’re just 1% of the population.”

The motels that were a constant backdrop of his childhood are part of something much larger than he’d realized as a kid.

“My relatives in Central Florida who stayed back to run the motels weren’t stuck,” Shah says. “They were quietly building real estate empires.”

Shah says the filmmaking team set out to answer a simple question: “How did all of this begin?”

The answer they found was surprising.

Director Amar Shah with his mother, Varsha Shah, in mid-1980s New Jersey. Shah grew up in the gas station and convenience store business, a world he says was closely intertwined with the