The President’s Cake

Nine-year-old Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayef) lives with her elderly grandmother (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) in a remote village in 1990s Iraq. International sanctions, the opening text explains, have caused scarcity and soaring prices. Despite the hardship, Lamia is selected by her teacher to bake a cake for the president’s birthday, which is treated as a mandatory national celebration, or face punishment. The next day, the youngster heads into town with her grandmother and pet rooster to purchase ingredients, but what should be a simple shopping trip becomes a grand and often dangerous undertaking. With The President’s Cake, writer-director Hasan Hadi explores life under Saddam Hussein’s regime through the eyes of a child to both heartfelt and harrowing results.

The filmmaker takes a show-don’t-tell approach to his subject matter. A classroom full of children dedicate their lives to their leader with a frightening level of passion, police ask for “donations” for the president’s birthday, and propaganda pictures of Hussein plastered everywhere give the dictator a menacing omnipresence. On top of all of that, the frequent sounds of US planes overhead and sights of injured soldiers are stark reminders of the ongoing Gulf War. All of this is poignantly contrasted with Lamia’s much smaller quest to acquire eggs and sugar as she wanders the streets and has staring contests with her best friend, Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem).

Nayef and Qasem (both of whom are untrained actors) are incredible throughout. They bring so much humour and likeability to the screen that it’s impossible not to become wrapped up in their antics as they encounter all sorts of characters over the course of their journey. Nayef is especially wonderful here and makes up most of this feature’s emotional core. One of the most heartbreaking sequences sees her searching for her beloved rooster when it’s snatched from the street.

As playful as the script can be, the harsh realities of life under Hussein’s regime are never far away. Events take a tragic turn in the third act, with the final moments being so earth-shatteringly distressing that they’d almost seem out of place if it weren’t for the constant foreshadowing.

The President’s Cake is a fiercely powerful work of cinema. By framing the corruption and poverty of Hussein’s oppressive reign through the lens of a childhood adventure, Hadi creates something that is as whimsical as it is devastating.