From the liner notes

Director Mohamed Al-Daradji literally risked life and limb to bring you the only film about the Iraq War told from the Iraqi point of view. A film Variety calls "an ambitious work that's both harrowing and beautiful". Ahlaam is the tale of three patients in a Baghdad mental institution running through rioting streets after their hospital is decimated.

The filmmaker had a camera in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. His crew was beaten and lined up to be shot by the insurgents, interrogated by American Soldiers, his 14 year old boom man was shot in the leg and someone from the cast was kidnapped. Somehow, the footage survived and has evolved into a powerful, bone chilling story of human beings struggling to make sense of unimaginable circumstances.