SAJAD MOHAMAD QASEM AND BAHEEN AHMED NAYYEF IN THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE

Childhood in Iraq in the age of Saddam

It would be churlish not to admire Hasan Hadi's passion project first feature, which (in the wake of today's opening in Paris of Christophe Barratier's The Children of the Resistance) seems a bit like a volume from a series of graphic novels, "Children of Saddam Hussein." Set in the early nineties, the film follows a nine-year-old girl and boy who go on a useless errand to fulfil a forced "patriotic" project. Their martinet of a schoolteacher (he wields far more stick than carrot) has held a drawing. The dear leader's birthday is coming. The teacher pretends these tasks are rewards, but the way he forces a boy who arrives late by entering his name in the box five times shows it is a punishment. There will be more punishment for any of the "lucky ones" who don't come up with the assigned offering. And all this is a charade. The stuff will just be presented in class, not sent to the presidential palace.

With very gentle irony, the film ends with a brief clip of the actual celebration, Saddam Hussein's 50th. Those chosen in the class are assigned projects to celebrate this "great" event. Sa3id is to gather fresh fruit. Lam3iyya has a tougher task: to bake a cake. Eggs, flour and baking powder happen to be in very short supply. The meanness of the class situation has been shown by how the teacher has stolen Lam3iyya's lunch, an apple, from her briefcase. She is the top student in the class. What is her reward for that?

If the makings of cake are hard to come by, so is money. This is the early 1990's. The US-led "Persian Gulf War" is going on. The film depicts the harsh conditions following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent international sanctions, focusing on the impact of this wartime, impoverished environment on daily life.

But this plays out in a combination of Italian neorealism and a fairy tale - or the graphic novel referred to above. Only instead of a lost bike, the two kids, who go around together, along with a rooster, are looking for goods that are almost impossible to get for a useless ceremonial purpose. The title, Kingdom of the Marshes, is pointed because while not otherwise essential to the story, it refers to a region Saddam Hussein had filled in, destroying a way of life, in revenge against a group that was insufficiently obedient to him. The dp Tudor Vladimir Panduru, who does terrific work here, presents a lovely pastoral scene of marshland life in the film's opening. Obviously some of it remains because we see the characteristic buildings made of reeds as well as the boats.

Hadi is terrific both in his recreation of the setting - an impoverished world dominated by huge portraits of the dictator - and in his use of young non-actors, especially Baneen Ahmed Nayyef as the girl and Sajad Mohamad Qasem as the boy, not to mention, as the girl's grandmother "Bibi," Waheeda Thabet, a venerable, leathery-faced crone you don't want to mess with. This is an ironic work. It doesn't have the tragic resonance of Georges Poujouly and Brigitte Fossey in René Clément's shatteringly sad 1952 Forbidden Games set in WWII France.

Though it could be moving into Forbidden Games territory in its final classroom scene, mostly what Cake has is the determination of long sufferers. The devil is in the details of this film as mostly Lam3iyya's quest is followed. She even tries to trade jewelry or a camera to pay for the treasured ingredients. The exhausting quest really does parallel De Sica's Ladri di biciclette in narrative structure.

We learn a little about the kids. Sa3id's father is a beggar and he is trained himself as a little thief. But as emerges in an argument, at least he has a father; Lam3iyya doesn't. She has the indestructible Bibi, who, in the end, under all this pressure, isn't. It is Sa3id's mother who bakes the cake.

They encounter a pregnant woman who is so grateful to the kids she promises to name her baby after them. But when she learns the girl's name is Lam3iyya, she strongly hopes it is a boy. This is just personal preference - and another little joke.

Sheri Linden in a Cannes Hollywood Reporter review found "lovely comedy" in the way Sa3id and Lam3iyya "bicker like a long-married couple," felt with them the "anguished pangs" when "their tensions explode" in a "memorable" rooftop scene, and described the film as "a tragicomic gem."

What we can admire most is the superb manner in which the gone era of Iraqi life has been lovingly recaptured - if with half-shielded eyes against its depredations. Hadi's rich gift is evident, though next time we may hope he relies less on styles of the past. He has already put Iraqi filmmaking on the map.

The President's Cake/ مملكة القصب (mamlikat al-qassab "Kingdom of Reeds", 105 mins., premiered in Cannes Directors' Fortnight May 16, 2025, playing in dozens of other festivals including Hamptons, BFI, Mill Valley, Athens, Chicago. Limited US theatrical release by Sony Pictures Classics beginning Feb. 6, 2026. Metacritic rating: 83%.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.