Director: Hasan Hadi
Stars: Banin Ahmed Nayef, Sajad Mohamed Qasem, Waheed Thabet Khreibat
With some notable assistance from buzzy Hollywood exec producers such as Eric Roth and Marielle Heller, Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi brings to bear his feature debut set in his home country circa 1990; an opportunity to reflect on the regime of Saddam Hussein through the eyes of a child. It’s April 26th. Two days before the dictator’s birthday creates a national fervour of feted celebration for the supreme ruler. In a rural river community of the Mesopotamian Marshes, young Lamia (Banin Ahmed Nayef) is picked in the school lottery to bake a cake for the festivities. Living in poverty with her aging grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), resources are scarce to rustle up this frivolity. Lamia ventures into the bustling city to collect ingredients, with only her trusty pet rooster Hindi – swaddled under her arm and ready to steal any given scene – for company.
It’s a cute PG-rated premise for an adventure, with each ingredient promising to be it’s own little episode. Bracketed by scenes in the classroom, The President’s Cake inevitably draws easy comparison to Abbas Kiarostami’s ’80s breakout Where is the Friend’s House? as a potentially comic fool’s errand gives Hadi the opportunity to ruminate on the moral compass of the populous at large from a vantage of complete innocence. The association is perhaps a little too present within the film. But there are numerous ways that Hadi steps away from the template and secures this story as his own.
For a start, Lamia has more company than just Hindi. For the most part she is joined by her neighbour and friend, crafty pickpocket Saeed (Sajad Mohamed Qasem). While Lamia herself is rooted in honesty and earnestness, the evident poverty brought about by the UN’s sanctions and the influence of Saeed wear away at her burgeoning moral compass. From the off we’re witness to queues for rationed out water supplies. Hadi notes how desperation normalises crime (petty theft is rife throughout their adventures), reflecting also the humdrum universal injustices of any capitalist system.
Still, this all feels like a relatively low-stakes drama, but for the fear of reprisal found in Lamia’s wide eyes. Hadi has done well to find such an eminently likeable young star in Ahmed Nayef. In her gaze we understand the threat of repercussions at school, and in the world around her we witness the commitment, indoctrination and peer pressure that warps this sense of duty into something seismic for the young girl. The President’s Cake is eminently watchable, but it’s also methodically paced. Slow, some might say. Relaxed and happy to become distracted by minutiae or side stories, such as Bibi’s tragic misadventures or those of taxi driver Jasim (Rahim AlHaj), who gets drawn into a mission to find Lamia when she absconds on her quest alone. There’s something wryly ironic about Bibi falling foul of her own unsupervised diabetes while her granddaughter is out in the streets trying to find ingredients for a cake.
The hustle and bustle of the city is rendered well, and Hadi particularly seems to enjoy observing the dichotomy between the world of the kids (generally quiet, thoughtful and peaceful) and that of adults (frequent bouts of unproductive shouting). It’s perhaps also notable that even when Lamia and Saaed fall out, their fights are so easily forgotten. Such pointed acts of contrast subtly dig at the follies of the period, satirising the people who’ve bought into idolatry as much as the regime that’s promoting it.
The film’s finale literally explodes the movie, recontextualising the relative trivia and reminding us that even war zones are home to everyday dramas. Slightly before this tonal lurch, a quiet scene lingers longer. By night, with a number of new experiences under her belt, Lamia gazes into her reflection in the marshy waters, and sees Bibi staring back at her. In this moment the two are at their most spiritually connected, but the scene also glumly promotes a pessimistic idea that the lot for women in Iraq has and will remain unchanged across generations. That Lamia’s future is Bibi, and that they’re but women in a chain. And that’s sort of the nature of The President’s Cake; a breezy affair that belies a lot of sobering reflections – on the past and well as the future.
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