Lantern-lit waterways and lengthy, skinny boats utilized by villagers and kids for journeys to market and faculty shouldn’t be a picture up to date audiences maintain of Iraq, particularly through the brutal regime of its infamous fifth President, Saddam Hussein. Political narratives usually obscure the earthier information that fashionable Iraq was Mesopotamia, thought-about by many because the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of the primary written story in human historical past. The epic of Gilgamesh dwarfs any legend surrounding stated dictator, whose ironclad, decades-long reign made determined, repressed plebeians of the citizenry, and whose playbook included requiring all colleges to assign a scholar to bake a cake to have fun his birthday. All of this at a time when UN-backed sanctions deepened poverty and created widespread shortages of meals and medication.
Aptly then, and within the spirit of resistance, Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi opens his debut function, “The President’s Cake,” with a clairvoyant line from Gilgamesh, because the digital camera sails throughout a balmy nightfall on the traditional marshland waterways of southern Iraq. A poignant realist fable developed on the Sundance Function Movie Program, the recipient of a number of fellowships and grants, and government produced by Marielle Heller and Eric Roth, the character-focused movie dispels in some ways pervasive stereotypes related to the Center Jap nation.
Hadi relegates some placing political symbolism — primarily, fascinating omnipresent Saddam portraiture and slogans, sufficient to overwork and discourage Iraq’s future Shepard Faireys — on the stage of world constructing. As an alternative, Hadi is completely centered on telling the story of nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef), a marshland resident, alongside together with her grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat).
Within the movie’s opening, they’re working errands on their boat. Elegant strings and quiet pictures by cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru disarm and make us lean in, making ready us for the stress that can quickly grip this two-person family; three, when you rely Lamia’s comically affected person pet rooster, Hindi. A few days earlier than Hussein’s birthday, Bibi will get fired sans clarification from her job working within the fields. And regardless of deploying distraction techniques in her classroom, Lamia is crushed to be chosen by draw as the coed in command of baking the cake — her classmates acquired off fortunate with duties of bringing flowers, fruit, or cleansing provides — at a time when flour, eggs, and sugar had been astronomically costly and scarce.
Granddaughter and grandmother set off to the massive metropolis to buy these mighty elements, however Bibi has a surprising shock in retailer for Lamia. The distraught and bereft lady takes off with Hindi, and runs into her classmate Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), additionally visiting Baghdad looking for his father, a solider who he has heard has been wounded by American bombs. The 2 comply with workforce up for his or her missions.
So begins a darkish journey, a fable, and a cautionary story, during which the resourceful youngsters encounter one impediment after one other, offered by a revolving door of characters: an unsympathetic pregnant lady who cracks an unjust joke, a pervy shopkeeper who doesn’t preserve his promise, a clockmaker who dupes them … you get the gist. Lamia doesn’t know that Bibi has gone into super-grandma mode after realizing the folly of her abandonment plan, parking herself in loud protestation on the police station. A form mailman — whose particular activity is to ship the autocrat his fanfare correspondence — may simply become the archetypal Good Samaritan. And, tucked in Lamia’s arms, Hindi the rooster may simply show to be the Soothsayer.
For almost all of the story, Lamia and Saeed are left to their very own gadgets, together with resorting to thievery. As archetypal fairy story buildings go, every time they’re chased by antagonists, they only miss the adults who might help them, because the forged of characters followers out throughout hospital, market, cafe, and mosque. The war-torn metropolis feels mappable as Hadi stitches collectively a story kissed by destiny at every flip of the alleyway. For the youngsters, it’s as if humanity’s carnival of deception and despair has engulfed them.
To Hadi’s immense credit score, he doesn’t infantilize the kid characters. Nor are they compelled to develop up or “come of age” per an apparent trajectory. They’re caught up by the logics of conflict and autocracy. As protagonists, they spring in direction of their objectives, however adults preserve disappointing them, and their quiver of techniques and reserves of luck threaten to expire. The feat of “The President’s Cake” is that Hadi exhibits Lamia and Saeed each as mere youngsters who bicker and insult one another, but in addition as turning into topics of a regime that they had by no means grasped past faculty meeting, the place they routinely chanted the proclamation, “With our souls and blood, we’ll redeem Saddam.”
As they seek for eggs, sugar, and father figures, they glimpse as solely youngsters can the encroaching value on their souls, and attempt to redeem themselves when the chaos turns into an excessive amount of by enjoying a staring sport. Who will blink first?
Unblinkingly, Hadi doesn’t aspire to filmmaking in auteur mode. A shot of a fighter jet in opposition to a minaret could not boast the luxuriant fantastic thing about a signature Cuaron black-and-white picture of a aircraft’s reflection on a puddle of water, however it’s ensconced in an aesthetic that Hadi argues is related for the storytelling. He shows robust command over authenticity of interval, place, and casting of supporting actors. The occasional swoop of craft musculature — equivalent to Lamia’s encroachment into majestic procession displaying a telling number of social actors hoisting a garlanded reduce out of Hussein — is decidedly in service of characterization and plot.
Hadi additionally extracts sharp performances from his memorable non-actors. Nayyef as Lamia all the time has her neck perched a bit of outward, indicating a perpetual alertness, and eyes shining with tearful knowledge, indicating braveness that hasn’t but crowed. Qasem as Saeed has a worldliness that at a second’s discover can slide into world-weariness. In a single scene of respite, music and dance in a restaurant, he provides a glance of longing that generates goosebumps. Hadi waits till a pivotal second within the second half to present a closeup of Khreibat as Bibi: solely then can we discover the traditional tattoos on her face, and register for a second that Iraq is, in truth, an historic tradition.
“The President’s Cake” is a case of comparatively modest filmmaking that turns into wealthy as a result of archetype and characterization coordinate the story world. In some stretches, although, the filmmaking and the narrative urgency fall a bit flat. Political imagery begins to really feel one-note. Scenes don’t really feel cohesive at their edges, even when their internal logic is strong. As new antagonists arrive, the stakes and the stress don’t all the time ratchet accordingly, ensuing within the occasional sense of the anti-climactic.
The road from Gilgamesh on the prime of the movie is about how the lord directed him to take a look at the water and see his cherished one. Hadi bookmarks this on the finish, with a lilting shot of Lamia peering into the marshes. As audiences, although, our investments in her and Saeed are in the end rewarded. We depart questioning what grew to become of them and the place they’re right now. Did they stare helplessly into the sordid future of their land, or did they blink?
Grade: B
“The President’s Cake” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition. It’s at present in search of U.S. distribution.
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