President’s Cake Review – A very revealing story of a child on a baking mission for Saddam Hussein’s birthday | film

TThere’s adorable charm and sweetness in this debut from Iraqi director Hassan Hadi, a Bake Off-style adventure about a young girl in early 1990s Iraq whose school asks her to make a birthday cake in honor of Saddam Hussein, despite sanctions and the resulting shortage of every cake-making ingredient. Hadi is a former Sundance Lab Fellow and his film lists major Hollywood stars Chris Columbus and Eric Roth among its executive producers — who may have urged Hadi to sprinkle some old Tinseltown sugar into the mix. The moment when the little girl looks at her reflection in the river is definitely inspired by the movie The Lion King.

Among the largely non-professional actors is the wonderful Benin Ahmed Naif, who plays nine-year-old Lamia, whose greedy teacher devours the apple she brought to school for lunch. This braggart announces that the class must draw lots for who will bake a Saddam cake; It falls on Lamia. In addition, her friend Saeed (Sajjad Muhammad Qasim), who has a crush on Lamia, must provide fruit for this party, which only the teacher will devour. Lamia sets out for the city with her grandmother Bibi (Wahid Thabet Khouribat) on a desperate shopping trip, bringing with her her pet rooster, Hindi, who gives a wonderfully animalistic performance and whose unpredictable yelping clearly forced the actors to improvise lines around him.

They meet Saeed, who has been groomed to be a pickpocket by his beggar father and who intends to steal fruit or something else to sell for fruit; On their travels, these seekers of cake ingredients, like old-time bicycle thieves, encounter a series of colorful characters, including a grocer who offers rare foods to a pregnant customer in exchange for sexual favors, and, in one dark scene, a gay man who offers to take Lamia to his apartment for some baking powder. The postman transporting Lamia and Pepe in his car is very excited about their mission: “I adore cake! It is the greatest invention in the history of mankind!”

But throughout the film, as if to spoil every happy moment and intensify every sad moment, there are banners and posters of Saddam; There is hardly a scene on the street that is not devoid of complexity due to a demonstration bearing posters of Saddam and storming the camera while chanting loyalty. This is, after all, life in wartime. The postman’s other passenger is a man blinded by an American bomb who is engaged to a woman he has never seen, so it doesn’t matter if she’s not pretty.

The film meanders and meanders, occasionally speeding up into a mad dash for its many scenes in which adults chase children. Tasting the cake itself turned out to be a very important high point.