'Not a political film': The President’s Cake brings Iraqi cinema back to Cannes

In a powerful cinematic homecoming, Iraq returns to the Cannes Film Festival (13-24 May 2025) with filmmaker Hasan Hadi's debut feature, The President's Cake.

Premiering in the Directors' Fortnight section on 16 May, The President's Cake has earned critical acclaim and marked a historic milestone: it is considered the first major Arabic-language Iraqi film set inside Iraq to screen at Cannes.

While Hiner Saleem's Kilometre Zero was the first Iraqi film selected for Cannes' official competition in 2005, it was a Kurdish–Iraqi co-production.

Similarly, Europa (2021), directed by Haider Rashid and also shown in Directors' Fortnight, was set outside Iraq and focused on an immigrant's journey across the Turkish–Bulgarian border.

In contrast, The President's Cake offers an unfiltered Arab–Iraqi perspective, illuminating a harrowing chapter in the country's history through the eyes of a child.

Starring Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Sajad Mohamad Qasem, Waheed Thabet Khreibat and Rahim AlHaj, the film tells the story of a young girl tasked with baking a cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday — on what was known as "draw day".

Her quest to gather the ingredients becomes a harrowing journey, revealing the hardship endured by Iraqis under international sanctions and authoritarian rule.

Life under sanctions

The film presents a poignant and intimate portrait of life in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime, particularly during the crippling UN sanctions imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Nine-year-old Lamia lives with her grandmother and pet cockerel in a remote village in southern Iraq.

She and other children row across a river to attend school, where they live in fear of their teacher, Mossa, who threatens to report students to the authorities if they fail to celebrate the president's birthday properly.

During his time in Cannes, Hadi told Ahram Online that the film draws from his childhood memories.

"I was born just a few days before the comprehensive embargo on Iraq was imposed.

Those were very tough years. There was a lack of food and medicine. Many people suffered, including countless children who died," he said.

Despite the hardships, Saddam's regime mandated school celebrations for his birthday — demanding fruit, cakes and flowers, all to be provided by families who could scarcely afford them.

Although the film explores the political climate, Hadi emphasised to Ahram Online that The President's Cake "is not a political film".

"It's a story about humanity and a broken society, told from a child's point of view," he said.

Focusing on personal and emotional experiences, the film offers a moving depiction of life during a tumultuous period while steering clear of overt political commentary.

Hadi believes the Iraqi film industry is slowly re-emerging, with more young filmmakers working on debut projects.

"We are in the process of building our industry," he said, pointing not only to The President's Cake but also to other emerging productions that explore Iraq's rich history while bearing witness to its recent past.

Filming the forgotten

The President's Cake is an Iraq–US–Qatar co-production produced by US-based Leah Chen Baker (TPC Film LLC). Although Hadi was offered the chance to shoot outside Iraq, he declined.

"It was impossible for me. I had to shoot this film in Iraq — it documents a significant part of our country's history," he told Ahram Online.

Recreating the 1990s, however, posed significant production challenges.

"Some of these locations no longer exist," Hadi explained. "We had to rebuild entire settings and overcome major logistical and technical obstacles, as well as find suitable cast and locations."

It was also important to him that the film appear to have genuinely been made at the time.

"I wanted it to look like it had been hidden since the 1990s and is only now being discovered," he said. "We don't see much about that period in Iraq's history."

A Q&A session with the director and cast and crew members followed the screening.

A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Hadi is a recipient of the Dean's Fellowship and a 2022 Sundance Institute Screenwriting and Directing Fellow, as well as winner of the Sundance NHK Award.

His accolades include the Gotham–Marcie Bloom Fellowship, Black Family Production Prize, Sloan Foundation Production Award, BAFTA Newcomers Programme, SFFILM Rainin Grant and Doha Film Institute Production Grant.

From : Al-Ahram