The President's Cake
Mamlaket Al-Qasab
A young girl is tasked with baking a cake to celebrate Saddam Hussein’s birthday in this playful fable that won two awards at Cannes including the Caméra d’Or.
In 1990, nine-year-old Lamia lives with her grandmother Bibi and her beloved cockerel Hindi in Iraq’s Mesopotamian marshes. Harsh international sanctions have sent basic living costs skyrocketing; but even though his people are hungry, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein still demands that the nation celebrate his birthday, replete with a lavish cake. Assigned to bake such a cake for her local school – with severe consequences on offer if she fails – Lamia teams up with her pal Saeed to undertake an odyssey of procuring flour, eggs and sugar in a place where they’re in desperately short supply.
Returning to the site of his childhood experiences in Iraq, writer/director Hasan Hadi delivers a distinctive debut feature, brought to screen with the backing of executive producers Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, MIFF 2015), Chris Columbus (Home Alone) and co-writer Eric Roth (Killers of the Flower Moon). Telling a timely tale of life under a dictatorship as seen through the eyes of a child, Hadi’s film draws from neighbouring Iran’s cinematic tradition of symbolic stories led by young protagonists. Arriving direct from Cannes, where it premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight, The President’s Cake marks the arrival of an impressive new voice.
“From the pastoral beauty of its opening sequence to the gut punch of its last, Hadi’s film is an exceptional screen debut, as perceptive as it is kinetic and, with one eye on the bombers overhead, brimming with life.” – The Hollywood Reporter
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