Original title: Mamlaket al-qasab
Iraq/Qatar/USA • Drama • 2025 • Running Time: 105min
Language: Arabic
Audience Response: 22 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’: 3 votes
- Very Good’: 12 votes
- ‘Good’: 7 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 0 votes
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
Read the comments here or visit the “President’s Cake” discussion page to join in the conversation.
Synopsis:
While people across 1990’s Iraq struggle to survive, 9-year old Lamia has been selected by her teacher 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, her loyal friend Saeed, and her pet rooster Hindi, she navigates vendors and police officers along the way.
This is an impressive first feature from the writer-director Hasan Hadi, a sharply observed, bittersweet, child’s-eye odyssey that avoids cute-kid cliches.
Wendy Ide (Observer)
Director: Hasan Hadi
Writer: Hasan Hadi
Main Cast:
(for a full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit The President’s Cake pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes
Film Notes:
There’s a terrific charm and sweetness in this debut from Iraqi film-maker Hasan Hadi, a Bake-Off style adventure about a little girl in early ‘90s Iraq, required by her school to make a birthday cake in Saddam Hussein’s honour, despite sanctions and the consequent shortage of every single cake-making ingredient.
Hadi is a former Sundance Lab fellow and his film lists Hollywood heavy-hitters Chris Columbus and Eric Roth among its executive producers – who may just have induced Hadi to sprinkle some old-fashioned Tinseltown sugar into the mix. The moment when the little girl gazes at her own reflection in the river is surely inspired by The Lion King?
The cast is largely unprofessional and Baneen Ahmed Nayyef is excellent as nine-years-old Lamia, whose greedy teacher gobbles the apple she has brought to school for her lunch. The class draw lots to see who must bake the cake. Lamia is the unlucky one, but her pal Saeed, who has a crush on her, has to provide the fruit for this party, on which only the teacher will be gorging himself. With her grandmother and carrying her pet cockerel Hindi – a great animal performance – she sets off to town on a desperate shopping expedition. As a result of the cockerel’s unpredictable crowings, do the actors have to improvise some lines around him? Possibly!
Like the bicycle thieves of old, they encounter a succession of vivid characters. Look out for the postman who gives Lamia and Bibi a lift and gets very excited about their mission: “I adore cake! It’s the greatest invention in human history!”