In 2003, he returned to Baghdad, Iraq to begin work on his first feature film "Ahlaam" which he filmed over in a four-month period during the war. Filming was difficult as electricity would often cut out from time to time. Towards the end of filming, he and three members of his crew were kidnapped but managed to escape being killed by insurgents, who accused them of making a propaganda film in support of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. The captors were preparing to shoot them before they fled from the sound of police sirens. On the same day, they were said to have been abducted again from a Baghdad hospital by another group of gunmen who beat them up and then turned them over to the U.S. military, who held them in harsh conditions for six days on the suspicion that they were filming insurgent attacks for Al Qaida. "Ahlaam" screened at more than 125 international film festivals and received more than 22 awards, as well as Academy Award and Golden Globe consideration.