The President's Cake
By Kit Macdonald
The President’s Cake is a quietly devastating Iraqi drama that uses a child’s perspective to expose the ridiculousness and cruelty of life under dictatorship. Set during the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein, the film centres on a young girl who becomes the unluckiest child in her class: her name is picked out of a hat and she must bake a birthday cake for “the President” as part of a compulsory school ritual. The assignment gradually reveals itself as a matter of fear, scarcity and survival – in a country hollowed out by sanctions, even finding basic ingredients becomes an ordeal.
Director Hasan Hadi allows the power of his work to be felt through everyday details: anxious glances, whispered warnings and the weight of unspoken rules – in a recent interview, Hadi said: “No one ever told you, ‘Don’t talk bad about Saddam.’ They didn’t need to. You knew.” The regime’s presence is omnipresent yet largely unseen, looming over domestic spaces and childhood routines alike.