Iraqi President Saddam Hussein liked to celebrate his birthday, even demanding that school children nationwide bake him cakes—despite daunting food shortages in the waning years of his regime. Nine-year-old Lamia, who lives with her grandmother in a remote marshland, has the dubious luck to be “picked” as the student to produce the cake for the Supreme Leader’s fete. This near-impossible task forces them (plus Lamia’s pet rooster Hindi) to travel to the city for scarce basic ingredients. There, Lamia ditches Granny and joins her best friend Saeed in search of the elusive supplies, the day evolving into a sometimes-fraught adventure. Writer-director Hasan Hadi uses his own youth as the springboard for his first feature, a remarkable story of friendship, discovery, and understanding, as well as perseverance and loss, as seen through a child’s eyes. The first Iraqi feature to play at Cannes, this big-hearted drama won the festival’s Camera D’Or. —Dennis Harvey
Hasan Hadi
Hasan Hadi is an Iraqi writer-director. He grew up in southern Iraq, during wartime, and over the years worked in journalism, production, and as an adjunct professor at NYU's Graduate Film Program. He received the Gotham-Marcie Bloom Fellowship, the Black Family Production Prize, and the Sloan Foundation Production Award. He is a 2022 Sundance Lab Fellow, the recipient of the 2022 Sundance/NHK Award, SFFILM Rainin Grant, a Doha Film Institute Grant, and the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award for his debut, The President's Cake. He previously made Swimsuit (2021), winner of Best Narrative Short at Urbanworld Film Festival.