ReviewThe President’s Cake movie review: Cannes-winning Iraqi drama is an instant classic
Hasan Hadi’s profound film follows a young Iraqi girl trying to find ingredients for a cake to celebrate Saddam Hussein’s birthday
4.5/5 stars
Hasan Hadi makes a striking debut with The President’s Cake.
Winning the Iraqi filmmaker the Camera d’Or for best first feature at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, the film perfectly blends the political and the personal to elevate its narrative into something quite profound.
Set in Iraq in the early 1990s under Saddam Hussein’s rule, the narrative hinges on the dictator’s decree that his people annually celebrate his birthday. Every April, children in schools are assigned various tasks – from collecting flowers and fruits to even baking a cake.
The latter might sound like a pleasant enough exercise, except that international sanctions have left basic ingredients in short supply or even banned.
That is the dilemma facing nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef), who draws the short straw and must somehow find everything she needs to assemble the cake and bring it to her class.