“An assured debut that showcases a directing talent from a country that isn’t a staple at festivals.”

During the ’80s and ’90s Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ruled his country with an iron fist, and using that fist cultivated a cult of personality that had the Iraqi people in a chokehold. So it’s no surprise that his specter looms large over Hasan Hadi’s debut feature The President’s Cake, and not just because Saddam is the titular president. His image pops up throughout the film, and he is showered with a lot of praise, even if it’s the result of indoctrination (seeing a classroom full of nine-year-olds chant that they would give their blood for him is chilling). Following a young girl who has to bake the man a cake for his birthday, Hadi’s film is an assured debut that showcases a directing talent from a country that isn’t a staple at festivals, even if the episodic nature of young Lamia’s odyssey makes the film drag at points.

It’s April 26, 1990, in the wetlands of Southern Iraq, two days before the birthday of the president. ‘Draw day’ has come, the day on which all schools across the country select students who have to bring gifts to the local festivities on the president’s birthday. The most important item is the birthday cake, and refusal to bake it can lead to punishment or even death. Nine-year-old Lamia tries the tricks her grandmother Bibi taught her to escape this fate, but the luck of the draw is not in the girl’s favor: she is this year’s chosen one. Bibi takes her to the city, ostensibly to buy ingredients for the cake, but in reality to leave the girl with a friendly family, feeling that she has become too old to take care of Lamia. The headstrong girl runs away and goes wandering through the city in search of ingredients for the cake, helped by her classmate Saeed, a young pickpocket with a big mouth. Accompanied by Lamia’s beloved rooster Hindi, the two move from shop to shop, while Bibi’s desperate search for her little girl ends in the hospital.

The film switches back and forth between Lamia’s and Bibi’s storylines, the latter taken over by a friendly taxi driver once the old woman becomes bedridden. Hadi uses Lamia’s adventures to highlight the negative role of men in Iraq’s patriarchal society, as the various shopkeepers where she tries her luck are out for sex in one way or the other, or trying to fleece her. Meanwhile Bibi’s side of the story turns its attention to bureaucracy and class differences, with the policemen regularly and derogatorily referring to Bibi and the taxi driver as ‘peasants’. And all the while Saddam is there as an oppressive force, an all-watching eye; even the two youngsters already know that Iraqi walls can have ears. What The President’s Cake does very well is show the oppression, both from its regime but also from the position of power that men have in this society. A weaker aspect is its regular reminders of the effect American airstrikes had on the Iraqi people, an odd choice even if only for the fact that the film is set before the first Gulf War. Jet fighters are heard flying overhead, Lamia has to shelter from an airstrike, and a grim but amusing story featuring a groom blinded by an American bomb forms the link between the first two acts. Yet this point never truly feels congruent with Iraq’s internal problems at the time, with food shortages and extreme poverty the result of UN sanctions, not military force.

Hadi’s visual acuity is showcased, with the director making good use of the widescreen format, adding vignetting to date the film’s setting, and demonstrating a keen eye for camera movement. But his strong direction cannot prevent Bibi’s side of the story, in particular, from becoming repetitive. The film checks in too often with her and later the taxi driver, detracting from the clip at which Lamia’s story develops, a story that in itself is already episodic in nature. What keeps the film afloat in these lulls are the lovely performances of Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Lamia, a true discovery, and Waheed Thabet Khreibat as wrinkle-faced Bibi. And speaking of keeping things afloat, The President’s Cake also does a good job of shining a light on a little-known community that lives on reed islands in the floodplains of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. This is especially poignant in the context of Saddam draining these wetlands in 1991 as punishment for the so-called Marsh Arabs supporting an insurrection against him (since the end of his reign in 2003, these marshes have been steadily restored). It’s one of several details and layers that Hadi has worked into what is ostensibly a simple story, but the director uses Lamia’s journey cleverly to reflect on the wrongs of Iraqi society during Saddam’s reign. This makes The President’s Cake a more substantial debut than a first impression suggests, and shows that Hadi is a talented filmmaker with a good feel for letting the visuals help him tell his story, a story that can be enjoyed on different levels by all but the youngest among us.