The President's Cake (2025)
Hasan Hadi makes his feature directing debut with The President's Cake, an emotional drama with political overtones. He co-wrote the film with American screenwriter Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Munich) and shot the movie entirely in Iraq using mostly non-actors.
The President's Cake is set in 1990s Iraq under President Saddam Hussein's rule. Nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) is assigned by her teacher to make a birthday cake for the president. It doesn't matter that Lamia is poor because making the cake is mandatory. If she doesn't, she will face punishment and ridicule at school.
With the help of her sickly grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), and with her rooster Hindi in tow, Lamia travels to the city to get eggs, sugar, and flour. Eventually, Lamia gets help from her friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem) as they navigate nefarious characters while they search for the cake's ingredients.
Hadi's movie clearly has shades of Vittorio De Sica's 1948 Italian neorealist drama Bicycle Thieves, and that's great company to be in. The President's Cake is a heartbreaking story of the loss of childhood innocence in a war-torn country under a dictatorship. The character of Lamia is the heart of the film, and Nayyef's performance always feels genuine.
The President's Cake won the Audience
Award and the Caméra d'Or at the Director's
Fortnight section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
