The President’s Cake (PG)
A young schoolgirl is chosen to bake President Saddam Hussein’s birthday cake. A compulsory task with punishment if she fails.
While people across 1990s Iraq struggle to survive, 9-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) has been selected to prepare a cake to celebrate the President's birthday. In a landscape of fear and scarcity, where basic ingredients are nearly impossible to find, Lamia sets out on a determined journey throughout the big city in search of eggs, flour and sugar. Accompanied by her grandmother (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), her loyal friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem) and her pet rooster Hindi, she navigates vendors and police officers along her odyssey. While the film plays mostly like a genial fairy tale, with superbly balanced humour and drama, director Hadi is still unsparing about the ills of this patriarchal society. The film is set among beautiful Mesopotamian marshes of the director’s childhood, where school children glide through marshlands in canoes to get to their classes. (Subtitles)
Iraq 2025 Hasan Hadi 105m
