Heartbreak after heartbreak intensifies in Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake

The President’s Cake joins my list of child-starring international features that I stand firmly behind. 

The film captures what it is like to live under an authoritarian regime through the innocence of a young girl, as she struggles to do what the regime asks of her — bake a cake for Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

Set in 1990s Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s rule, Hasan Hadi’s directorial debut follows nine-year-old Lamia (played by Baneen Ahmed Nayyef), a schoolgirl living in poverty in the Iraqi marshes under the care of her grandmother, whom she calls Bibi (played by Waheed Thabet) as the two struggle to navigate life under the regime. Iraq at this time, plagued by international sanctions, is resource-scarce, but the regime expects its citizens to provide all the same.

As class begins, the teacher leads the excited third grade class through chants of praise for Saddam Hussein, with students additionally proclaiming they would give their lives for him. It’s important to note this patriotism isn’t focused on the country, but the leader himself. The film makes a point of showing how much Saddam’s name and iconography was plastered across the school and later on in the city.

When Lamia is one of the winners of her class’ raffle for the class’ celebration for the president’s birthday and tasked with procuring cake, Bibi tells her that they’ll go to the city to gather the ingredients, but devises a plan to give up Lamia to new guardians who can provide more for the child. The next day, Bibi takes Lamia — and her pet rooster, Hindi — to the city, but as she explains her plan to Lamia’s prospective foster parents, Lamia takes off — determined to secure the ingredients for the cake to prove she can take care of herself and remain with her grandmother. 

The young girl and her rooster companion are later joined by Lamia’s friend Saeed (played by Sajad Mohamad Qasem). When his name was drawn, he was tasked with bringing fresh fruit for the class’ celebration. Unlike Lamia, who begs merchants for items with the little change she has, Saeed lives off of pick-pocketing and is no stranger to taking what he needs.

The trio do the best they can to find the necessary cake ingredients — flour, sugar, baking soda and eggs — exploring the city and asking anybody they can for help along the way. But the city responds with apathy and disregard. They are manipulated, harassed and chased out of stores. For a journey that could be so easy for some in the city, the most Lamia could acquire were the eggs.

Outside of the sadness of the repeatedly shut doors is a comedy and lightness in the children having staring contests and arguing over the “ethics” of stealing. The two child actors bring tender playfulness and optimism to their performances, while the cinematography by Tudor Vladimir Panduru keeps the audience in a child-like point of view with low camera angles and colourful lighting. 

Despite this, heartbreak after heartbreak compounds. Ahmed Nayyef delivers one of the best child-actor performances of numbness I’ve ever seen, which gets more poignant as time goes on. Hadi’s direction skillfully captures somber moments with many scenes having scarce dialogue and focusing on the very capable performance of Ahmed Nayyef.

The film really punches hard to highlight how unnecessary it is that one child in every class, no matter how poor, was required to bake a cake for a man they would never see, who had a gorgeous cake to enjoy on his own irrespective of the struggle it might take for them to make it.

The heartbreak of the ending truly never ends, there’s no real hope or lesson to be learned. Only an immersion in the bleakness of a journey that seemed so simple and clearly unnecessary. Hadi’s directional debut is truly one for the ages.