The President's Cake
In this Cannes-lauded fable, a 9-year-old girl is tasked with baking a birthday cake for Saddam Hussein at her school — despite the severe food shortages in dictator-led Iraq.
Nine-year-old Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayef) has terrible luck at her classroom raffle: she is chosen to bake a cake for the president’s birthday celebrations. Bad luck, because in 1995 Iraq, food and water are scarce, not to mention sugar. And bad luck, because not bringing a cake to school could lead to torture—or something even worse.
To avoid what seems like inevitable failure, Lamia’s elderly grandmother (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) sets off to the city with her. Before long, Lamia is running through the streets of Baghdad with a rooster under her arm, searching for the ingredients of the cake recipe. Her classmate Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem) accompanies her for most of this journey.
Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake was both a revelation and a triumph at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Winner of the Caméra d’Or for best first feature, the film could easily be compared to the neorealist tradition of Vittorio De Sica, yet it also stands firmly on its own, drawing on the everyday moments and haunting realities of recent history.
The film is more than a simple one-day coming-of-age story; it exposes the ugliest aspects of Iraq’s dictatorship, from greed to the oppression and exploitation of the most vulnerable. Its final scene is unmatched in its intensity.
Johanna Siik (translated by Pauliina Jännes)