There’s a terrific charm and sweetness in this debut from Iraqi film-maker Hasan Hadi, a Bake Off-style adventure about a little girl in early-90s Iraq required by her school to make a birthday cake in Saddam Hussein’s honour, despite sanctions and the consequent shortage of every single cake-making ingredient. Hadi is a former Sundance Lab fellow and his film lists Hollywood heavy-hitters Chris Columbus and Eric Roth among its executive producers – who may just have induced Hadi to sprinkle some old-fashioned Tinseltown sugar into the mix. The moment when the little girl gazes at her reflection in the river is surely inspired by The Lion King.
Among the largely nonprofessional cast is the unselfconsciously excellent Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as nine-year-old Lamia, whose greedy teacher gobbles the apple she has brought to school for her lunch. This blowhard announces that the class must draw lots for which of them will bake the Saddam cake; it falls to Lamia. In addition, her pal Saeed (Sajad Mohama Qasem) – who has a crush on Lamia – has to supply the fruit for this party, on which only the teacher will be gorging himself. Lamia sets off into town with her grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) on a desperate shopping expedition, carrying her pet cockerel, Hindi, who gives a great animal performance and whose unpredictable crowings clearly forced the actors to improvise lines around him.
They encounter Saeed, who has been groomed as a pickpocket by his beggar father and who intends to steal either fruit or something else to sell for fruit; these cake-ingredient searchers on their travels, like the bicycle thieves of old, encounter a succession of vivid characters, including a grocer who gives rare treats to a pregnant customer in exchange for sexual favours, and, in one grim sequence, a paedophile who offers to take Lamia to his apartment for some baking powder. The postman who gives Lamia and Bibi a lift in his car gets very excited about their mission: “I adore cake! It’s the greatest invention in human history!”
But throughout the film, as if to spoil every happy moment and intensify every sad one, there are placards and posters of Saddam; there is hardly a street scene that isn’t complicated by a demonstration wielding Saddam posters and barging past the camera shouting their loyalty. This is, after all, life during wartime. The postman’s other passenger is a man blinded by an American bomb who is engaged to be married to someone he hasn’t seen, so it doesn’t matter if she isn’t beautiful.
The film saunters and meanders along, accelerating occasionally to a mad dash for the many scenes in which the children are being chased by grownups. The cake-tasting itself turns out to be an explosively important climax.
• The President’s Cake is in US cinemas now, in UK and Irish cinemas from 13 February, and in Australian cinemas from 2 April.
