Nov 12, 2026 7:30 pm | Iraq | 2025 | 105m | Cert 12 | Drama
From debut Iraqi director Hasan Hadi, The President’s Cake is a beautiful tale of love, friendship and resilience told from the perspective of a child growing up under Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime. It was the first Iraqi film to feature at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight and won both the section’s Audience Award, as well as the festival’s prestigious Camera d’Or.
Set during the first Gulf War, Lamia, a young girl from Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes, lives with her grandmother Bibi and her pet cockerel Hindi in a community struggling to get by under the harsh conditions of a country suffering under sanctions and at war. But under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, nothing will stop his mandatory birthday celebrations, including choosing a child from each school class across the land to bake a cake in his honour. Despite Lamia’s best efforts to avoid it, knowing how difficult it will be to source the ingredients, she is picked among her peers to produce the cake, which she must do, or face the consequences.
Lamia’s quest for the ingredients takes her from the rural marshlands into the city of Baghdad, allowing Hadi to explore the gamut of Iraqi society, painting a moving portrait of the resilience of a people caught between authoritarian rule and injudicious American imperialism.
… The film’s greatest achievement is its restraint. Hadi never lectures; instead, he lets the astonishing brilliance of his young lead carry a gutting reckoning on the erosion of innocence…