The President’s Cake, by debut Iraqi filmmaker, is Shortlisted for the Oscars
Birthday cakes are such a ubiquitous, expected part of life – but not when it’s the President’s Cake! Then it can bring fear and chaos and take impossible efforts to create something as mundane as a cake. Especially if it’s a mandatory cake for an authoritarian leader. The President’s Cake, a debut film by Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi takes on this nightmare scenario for Lamia, a nine-year-old girl in Saddam Husain’s Iraq in the 1990’s, who in spite of her fervent prayers, wins the lottery to make the mandatory cake for the dictator. A task which should be simple is difficult in a war-torn country with food shortages and corrupt leaders, where the small folk are merely puppets in the larger scheme of things. This engrossing film also shows the diehard spirit of ordinary people and the occasional kindness which makes life bearable.
The President’s Cake is set in rural Iraq
Hasan Hadi’s award-winning film The President’s Cake has been shortlisted for this year’s Oscars in the Best International Film category. At its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Directors’ Fortnight People’s Choice Audience Award as well as the Camera d’Or prize for Best First Film. The film has also just earned a nomination for Best First Feature Film by the Director’s Guild of America. You can see this movie now as Sony Classics is releasing it on February 6
Watch the teaser trailer for THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 29 critics’ reviews are positive. The website’s consensus reads: “A tenderly crafted, often devastating portrait of childhood in rural Iraq, The President’s Cake vividly brings to life its morally complex world through richly drawn characters and intimate storytelling.”
Director Hasan Hadi takes us into rural Iraq, into the world of Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) and her friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), both dirt poor and powerless. Lamia has been selected to bake the mandatory birthday cake “with extra cream” for the great leader Sadam Hussain in her school and the two go about, with her cockerel Hindi, struggling to get the eggs, flour and sugar in a marketplace of ruthless, selfish and disinterested adults, some even coercive and the rare one showing humanity. There is heartbreak and humor as Lamia and Saeed scavenge for the ingredients, using hard work, wits and bravado. They manage to keep their moral compass and their spirit intact.
You will root for this engaging pair even as you despair for the dismal state of the world.
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