SHREWSBURY FILM SOCIETY
| Director | Hasan Hadi |
|---|---|
| Country | Iraq |
| Year | 2025 |
The President's Cake is the debut feature from Iraqi writer-director Hasan Hadi, and one of the most acclaimed Arab films of recent years. Set in southern Iraq in 1990, during the final years before the Gulf War, the film centres on Lamia, a young schoolgirl selected to bake a birthday cake for Saddam Hussein. What begins as a seemingly simple assignment gradually becomes an odyssey through a society marked by fear, shortages and authoritarian absurdity. Accompanied by her friend Saeed and her pet rooster Hindi, Lamia searches for the ingredients needed to complete the task, encountering both kindness and danger along the way.
The film’s premise immediately recalls the tradition of childhood-centred cinema in which political realities are filtered through the eyes of the young. Reviewers have frequently compared the film to Italian neorealism, not simply because of its use of non-professional actors and location shooting, but because of its attention to the material texture of daily life. Food shortages, informal trade and bureaucratic intimidation are not treated as abstract political themes but as ordinary facts of existence. Writing in The New Yorker, Richard Brody described the film as “a neorealist treasure from Iraq”, praising its “humanism and visual richness” and the way it reveals “the political through the intimate.”
One of the film’s greatest strengths is its sense of place. Much of the action unfolds in the Mesopotamian marshes of southern Iraq, landscapes rarely seen in contemporary cinema. Cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru captures the reeds, waterways and villages with a luminous beauty that contrasts sharply with the atmosphere of political oppression. In The San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle highlighted this contrast, describing the film as “beguiling and unforgiving” and praising its “ethnographic vividness.” The marshlands are not simply a backdrop but an essential part of the film’s emotional world, suggesting both fragility and endurance.
The film also succeeds in balancing tonal shifts that many directors would struggle to control. Although the subject matter is serious, the narrative often unfolds with the rhythms of an adventure story or folktale. Moments of comedy and warmth emerge naturally from the relationship between the children, while the constant pressure of the regime remains present in the background. Variety praised the film’s “superbly balanced humor and drama”, while The Guardian noted the film’s ability to combine political critique with a “poignant” and often quietly funny coming-of-age story.
What distinguishes The President’s Cake from many political dramas is its refusal of simplification. Saddam Hussein himself is rarely seen directly, yet his presence permeates every aspect of life. The birthday cake becomes a potent symbol of authoritarian power: a celebratory object transformed into an instrument of fear. At the same time, the film avoids reducing Iraq to suffering alone. Hasan Hadi fills the story with moments of humour, resourcefulness and community, emphasising the resilience of ordinary people living under extraordinary conditions.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature, and many critics have pointed to the confidence of its storytelling and visual style.
For audiences accustomed to media representations of Iraq dominated by war reportage and geopolitics, The President’s Cake offers something rarer and more valuable: a vivid portrait of ordinary life shaped by history, seen through the perspective of those trying simply to get by. Humane, atmospheric and quietly political, it announces Hasan Hadi as a major new filmmaking voice.
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