Despite her attempts to avoid it, a nine-year-old rural schoolgirl in Iraq wins the dubious prize of being the one chosen in her class to make a birthday cake to celebrate the dictator’s birthday in The President’s Cake, directed by Hasan Hadi.
Shortages, Sanctions and Saddam
by Alexa DalbyThe President’s Cake
3 stars
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Debut director Hasan Hadi used mainly non-professionals, from whom he got wonderful performances, in his astonishingly professional, charming but dark, first feature. Write about what you know, they say, and he remembers the Iraq of his childhood in the 1990s, a country of shortages, sanctions and Saddam Hussain.
Despite her attempts to avoid it, a nine-year-old rural schoolgirl wins the dubious prize of being the one chosen in her class to make a birthday cake to celebrate the dictator’s birthday – but the ingredients are either too expensive or unavailable and she can’t find/afford them.
The film follows Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) as she goes with her grandmother Bibi (Waheeda Thabet) and pet rooster Hindi to the big city to complete her list. Apart from the help of a friendly, cheerful postman Jasim (Rahim AlHaj, in real life a well-known lute player) she finds the city’s inhabitants are venal or predatory, especially when the two females become separated. Lamia and her schoolfriend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), whom she meets by chance, thankfully share the adventure and Saeed’s mother shows Lamia how to make a simple cake, proving some people mean well.
It’s dangerous coming of age in a country at war. At times, though, the film is touristic (the marshlands, going to school by paddling a canoe) and ticks boxes if you don’t know Iraq but it’s a fascinating, tense, glimpse of adult life through the eyes of children. The President’s Cake has details/scenes specific to this wartime period and unfortunately lacks the universality of Panahi’s similar childhood-quest The White Balloon, but it’s still worth seeing.
The President’s Cake won the Camera d’or (for first-time directors) at Cannes, screened at the BFI London Film Festival and is Iraq’s entry (its first) to the International Oscars in March. It is released on 13 February 2026 in the UK.
