Rob Reviews "The President's Cake"

Taking place in 1990, The President’s Cake is a bold look at life in Iraq during a time when Iran’s UN-backed sanctions against the country led to its people doing anything and everything they can to survive.

Nine-year-old Lamia (Vaneen Ahmed Nayyef) has her name drawn during class to be the one to bring a cake to her class’ celebration of Saddam Hussein’s fiftieth birthday.  She is a poor girl that lives with her Bibi (or grandmother, played by Waheeda Thabet), who takes Lamia into the city to get ingredients via barter but winds up putting Lamia in a situation that leads her to flee to find the ingredients with just her rooster, Hindi, with her.  Along the way, she finds classmate, Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), who was tasked to bring fruit to the celebration, and together they embark on a journey that will involve dealing with corruption and their own inner issues the never could have anticipated while trying not to suffer punishment if they fail.

Remembering back to that time in my life (I was a senior in high school when the war broke out… it’s OK to do the math there), I can’t imagine what life was like in that part of the world.  Part of that is the fact that there is NO WAY this film would have been made back then due to the grasp the regime had on its people.  Their suffering is shown without pulling any punches here as the story is told through the eyes of a young girl that simply does not know any better about the world than the one she is told exists.  First-time feature director and writer Hasan Hadi weaves very stark tale that has Lamia facing danger at every turn and making decisions that no one at her age needs to have to make in a way that only got uncomfortable to me a couple of times (one of them got REALLY close to uncomfortable for me).  He wan both the Directors’ Fortnight Audience and Golden Camera Awards at this past year’s Cannes Film Festival, and I can see why.  This film tells a powerful story without making any hardcore statements in any direction up to its final moments with an innocence that stands out amongst the chaos around its characters, which makes it more palatable to a wider audience.

Being that The President’s Cake is a foreign film, you may have to seek it out, but you definitely would be doing yourself a favor to do so.  Even if you need to do so on a streaming service, this is a film that is truly fascinating, beautiful, and at times even heartbreaking, but that is also the journey of this life no matter who you are.