PRESIDENT’S CAKE, THE

(director/writer: Hasan Hadi; cinematographer: Tudor Vladimir Panduru; editor: Andu Radu;  cast: Banin Ahmad Nayet (Lamia), Sajad Mohamad Qasem (Saeed, Lamia’s friend), Waheed Thabet Khreibat (Bibi), Rahim Alhaj (Jasim, Mailman), Ahmad Qasem Saywan (Teacher), Nadia Rashak (Saeed’s mom), Maytham Mreidi (Saeed’s crippled father), Thaer Salem (Groom); Runtime: 102; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Leah Chen Baker; TPC Film/A Maiden Voyage Pictures; 2025-Iraq/USA/Qatar in Arabic with English subtitles)

“Crowd-pleasing film.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The film is set in 1990, during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein is the despotic president of an economically depressed Iraq. Saddam blames their economic collapse on the American president George Bush.

To satisfy his whims for his 50th birthday, Saddam orders the schoolchildren in every class in the country to bake him a birthday cake. In a rural school, the 9-year-old girl Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayet) is selected in a lottery you don’t want to win to bake Saddam a cake. Lamia is an orphan who lives in poverty in a hut by the river in the marshland with her elderly grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat). The innocent child hitches a ride into the city on a mail truck driven by Jasim (Rahim Alhaj), with Bibi, Hindi, her pet rooster, and her school friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), to purchase the ingredients. This episode becomes the crux of the observant adventure story that offers a dramatic slice of life impression on Iraq’s menacing society.

The crowd-pleasing film is amusingly told by Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi in his debut feature, who puts the icing on the cake in the powerful final few minutes.

It played at the Cannes Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 12/17/2025  GRADE: B+
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