Nine-year-old Lamia is an endearing child with a curious gaze and exemplary manners. She lives with her lovely grandmother on the banks of a picturesque river. One morning at school, her teacher assigned her a very important task: to bake a birthday cake for the president of the country. To do so, Lamia must gather all the necessary ingredients, so she embarks on a grand adventure to the city and, with the help of her friends, tries to meet a tight deadline.

This premise could easily belong to an innocent Disney-esque film, were it not for the historical and political context in which it is set. The President’s Cake takes place in the 1990s in Iraq, under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, whose tyrannical rule pushed the country to the extremes of poverty. The audience are consistently reminded of this context, as Lamia’s curious gaze focuses on American strike aircraft tearing the sky apart. The picturesque bank reveals itself as a settlement surviving under a severe humanitarian crisis, where an elderly grandmother struggles to raise her granddaughter, Lamia. The eggs, flour, sugar, and cream are so scarce that Lamia must search the city’s darkest corners in exchange for scary encounters with some of the ugliest manifestations of moral decay. A failure, whether it be an absence of the cake or its poor taste, would ultimately lead to dreadful punishment of the whole, however small, family. Surprisingly, this harrowing context does not negate the film’s amusing and adventurous nature. On the contrary, it is precisely the deliberate collision of these two seemingly incompatible elements that makes The President’s Cake such a special film.

“The film’s charming, immersive facets enrich a nuanced vision of a wounded social landscape”

This debut feature by Hasan Hadi, first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the Quinzaine section, opens on a sacred note. “God told Gilgamesh: ‘Look into the water, and you shall see your loved one. And God promised that those with pure hearts shall see the image of their loved one in the water.’” This quotation comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest surviving literary text originating in ancient Iraq. From the outset, this gesture immerses the viewer in the mythic and subtly mystical realm of Iraqi culture, while also hinting at how its original identity has been displaced from cinematic consciousness.

In histories of cinema, Iraq is invariably associated with an excessive flood of American war films, created to glorify the military spirit, justify the presence of troops, and, in rare but ethically questionable cases, artfully process soldiers’ trauma. These films collectively contributed to what film theory coined as ‘war spectacle’: an intense audiovisual experience that often romanticises or even desensitises tragedy for the sake of spectators’ entertainment. Hadi, distancing himself from established narratives on Iraq, reclaims the notion of spectacle in its rather original meaning.

In conditions of war, children often develop a form of dissociation as a mechanism for survival. But Hadi does not retain this distorted perception to the child. For Lamia, the quest unfolds as an energetic adventure story in its best traditions, while the grim social archetypes she encounters along the way are anything but childlike or adventurous. There is a moment in which a man lures Lamia into a dark room, promising some sugar in exchange. For her, danger is sensed instinctively, while the scene’s full implications emerge through adult spectatorship. In other words, the film’s charming, immersive facets enrich a nuanced vision of a wounded social landscape through one’s projection.

One of the film’s most compelling formal strategies is its chromatic palette: rich colour grading with confectionery-like reds and blues creates a visually captivating landscape, rendering even the omnipresent posters of Hussein strangely enchanting. Conveying such a specific point of view was a demanding task for cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru. Although typically known for his grim, static shooting of Romanian New Wave productions, which were largely rooted in the suffocating Ceaușescu dictatorship, in The President’s Cake Panduru trains his hand in the distinct, vibrant aesthetic of Iraq. Nevertheless, despite this switch up Panduru carefully frames a lucid picture that manages to keep pace with its distinct richness as a fable. The camera devotes equal attention to Lamia’s rooster, forever tucked under her arm, honouring both the tricky choreography of the mise-en-scène and the quiet intimacy of its close-ups.

“Standing as a tribute to the Iraqi children whose country was not only devastated by attack, but childhoods were stolen under severe economic precarity”

One of the film’s less obvious, yet most charming effects is achieved through deliberate abstraction, a strategy that often faces ethical questions in wartime fiction, but here appears to be surprisingly effective. Hadi situates the story “somewhere in the 1990s,” as the invasion occurred in August 1990, followed by sanctions whose devastating effects took hold with explosive speed and persisted until 2003. In its chronological ambiguity, the film frames the biggest evil as the sanctions themselves, which as the director claims are more violent than bombs. This gives Lamia’s story a metonymic quality, standing as a tribute to the Iraqi children whose country was not only devastated by attack, but childhoods were stolen under severe economic precarity. It is a truth that Hadi manages to face with sobriety, refusing to yield to the allure of comforting fairytale resolutions.

By layering abstraction onto genre filmmaking, The President’s Cake extends its commentary far beyond its geographical and historical confines. This becomes most evident in the film’s final moments, which conclude with a reverberating exclamation point. During the absurdist president’s birthday celebration in the classroom, the village undergoes intense shelling. Lamia and her friend take cover beneath a desk and play their favourite game of staring contests. A close-up of their faces framed against the backdrop of explosions could be transposed seamlessly to one of the many countries where children in Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq, as well as many other places, are still the innocent victims of terror.