The President’s Cake, Iraq’s first Oscar-shortlisted feature film

“People are not used to seeing these images from Iraq,” says Hasan Hadi. “It was an uphill battle to make this film. I feel like it opens the door for other artists in Iraq.” Hadi, a 37-year-old Iraqi writer-director, is in a Holborn office, talking to me about his debut feature, The President’s Cake. After premiering at Cannes, where it won the Camera d’Or, the deft coming-of-ager is Iraq’s first film to reach the Oscars shortlist for International Feature. It’s also an utter crowd-pleaser. “I’m happy with the awards we’re receiving,” he says. “But the dream is that the film gets seen by the general public.”

It’s January, a week before the Oscar nominations announcement (the film sadly didn’t make the final five), and Hadi speaks as if he’s still in disbelief that The President’s Cake exists. He describes to me the pitching process: a period-drama with a nine-year-old protagonist; an ensemble comprising non-actors; and it all has to be shot in Iraq. “I’d tell investors, and they’d feel like they’re losing money already,” he says with a laugh. “When your characters are in Iraq, speaking Arabic, it feels really ‘foreign’ to English-speaking audiences.”

The action unfolds in Iraq, in 1995 (the year isn’t specified, but Hadi tells me it’s 1995), a time when Saddam Hussein’s birthday is a national holiday, and, in each classroom, a child is picked at random to bake a cake to honour the dictator. Out of a box, 9-year-old Lamia’s name is selected, and she doesn’t dare protest, even when the teacher insists it must be a large cake with extra cream. When told “congratulations”, the child’s solemn face clearly disagrees.

After all, Lamia, played wonderfully by first-time actor Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, has to accrue eggs, flour, and sugar during a period of international sanctions against Iraq. Amidst extreme poverty, Lamia and her grandmother, Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), are barely surviving as it is in the Mesopotamian marshes. In the streets of Bagdad, Lamia’s attempts to attain food items lead to encounters with predators, criminals, and other Iraqis also on the brink of despair.

“I wanted it to feel like a fairytale told from a child’s point of view,” says Hadi. “The audience are more receptive to their world. Children aren’t biased. They show you the world as it is. And it was also my experience as a child.” Hadi grew up in Iraq but it was another classmate who was selected to bake a cake for Saddam Hussein. He did, though, experience air raids, just like in the film. “It’s frightening. You always see the F-16 roaming around.”

Darkly comedic and full of foreboding tension, the gorgeously shot arthouse drama captures a side of Iraq rarely seen in movies. Early scenes depict the serene beauty of the marshes as citizens commute by canoe beneath a blue, painterly sky. At night, Lamia and Bibi cross the same wetlands while paddling with an oar, the pair gradually realising they’re swaying towards a burning building. Often, the camera remains at Lamia’s height; in one scene involving flour theft, the surroundings adults aren’t seen from above their shoulders.

For this adventure, Lamia is joined by her pet rooster, Hindi, and her best friend, Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem). The pair’s exuberance is matched by kinetic camera movements and a propulsive storyline: each negotiation and attempt to purchase an ingredient (or steal it) is fraught with danger. Hadi’s script is also generous with gallows humour. For instance, a blind man they hitchhike with jokes that he’s been blessed with no longer having to worry about what his wife looks like. “You can be fully depressed and unable to function, or you can ridicule your pain,” says Hadi. “Humour is the only way to survive.”

You can be fully depressed and unable to function, or you can ridicule your pain. Humour is the only way to survive

Growing up in Iraq, Hadi became a cinephile through smuggled VHS cassettes he watched at night. As a child, he devoured everything from Bruce Lee and Baby Day’s Out to Kurosawa and Tarkovsky. “When I watched Godzilla and The Terminator, I felt like there was a fire inside me coming to life. But I’m also influenced by Italian neorealism, like De Sica and Rossellini, and Spanish magical realism, like Carlos Saura, and Antonioni and Kiarostami.”

Moving to New York, Hadi studied filmmaking at NYU where he was mentored by Todd Solondz, the director of Happiness, Palindromes, and Welcome to the Dollhouse. While Solondz may seem like an unlikely match for The President’s Cake, an overlap is apparent: the dark, bitter humour; an outspoken child protagonist in a cruel, unforgiving environment; and, as Hadi puts it, “[Solondz] appreciates good art. Happiness isn’t the kind of film I’d made, but I appreciate it.”

Hadi particularly remembers Solondz advising him that a director’s job isn’t to follow the script. “That would make you a contractor,” says Hadi. “He said that if you’re an artist, inspiration is going to keep coming.” Thus, on set, Hadi embraced improvisation and flexibility with locations, dialogue, and even characters. When one scene in a hospital didn’t work, Hadi had two actors swap their roles.

“With non-actors, you have to change the melody of the dialogue so that it works. I told the teacher, ‘The students don’t respect you. They laugh at you in between shots.’ The tension there was real. I didn’t need to fake it. He really was pissed.” Remarkably, Nayyef was only cast as Lamia days before the shoot. “When we auditioned her, she was very shy. People thought I was making a big mistake. Thank God, I could see through that. Shyness, you can take away. With non-actors, you get to know them, and you see what they’re capable of.”

Despite only having a short (Swimsuit) to his name, Hadi turned down financing opportunities that would require shooting the film in Morocco or Jordan. Few films get shot in Iraq, and the most famous examples are only brief sequences, like the opening of The Exorcist. “I’m not against shooting in Morocco,” he says. “But this story needed to be shot in real locations in Iraq, whether it’s the marshes or the restaurant. That’s why we’ve got such an emotional response from the local audience in Iraq, or the diaspora. They’re like, ‘They speak the accent I grew up with. It’s the same streets I witnessed.’”

While Hadi rattled off a long list of his influences, he clarifies that he wants his voice to be a singular expression of his identity. He uses the example of a poet who one day has to write their own poetry. He then refers to a scene where Bibi’s cloth flies away. “It’s an image I remember from when I was a child, and one of our relatives died. They took the body to the holy sites, and then they brought her back to the house. They were like, ‘The soul doesn’t rise to the sky until they visit their house.’

“When I wrote that scene with them going back to the marshes with Bibi, I was like, ‘That’s the moment the soul rises to the sky.’ Those filmmaking influences cultivated my mind to create such images.”

The President’s Cake is out in UK cinemas on February 13.