The President’s Cake

raq 2025, 105 min, Drama
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Director: Hasan Hadi

Arabic with English subtitles

What is billed by her teacher as an honor for nine-year-old Lamia turns into a supreme challenge when she draws the unlucky number requiring her to make a cake for her class in celebration of Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

Lamia lives with her grandmother, Bibi, in the Mesopotamian Marshes, and together—along with Lamia’s pet rooster—they go to Baghdad to procure the ingredients for the cake, which they can ill afford. There Lamia discovers that Bibi feels she can no longer care for her and plans to turn her over to a foster family. Lamia then runs away and meets up with her friend Saeed, and together they embark on a series of misadventures while trying to gather the ingredients for making the cake.

This poignant story of life in 1990’s Iraq under Saddam’s iron-fisted rule and the hardship of Western sanctions is based on the childhood recollections of director Hasan Hadi in his directorial debut.

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