The President’s Cake: dir Hasan Hadi (2025)

Hasan Hadi’s debut feature is a beautiful tale of love, friendship and resilience told from the perspective of a child growing up under Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime. It was the first Iraqi film to feature at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight and won both the section’s Audience Award and the Camera d’Or.

Nine-year-old Lamia (the unselfconsciously excellent Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) is required by her school to make a birthday cake for the Iraqi president. Lamia sets off into town with her grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) and her pet cockerel Hindi; as she shops for sanctioned and hard-to-find ingredients, she meets a series of vivid characters, some very engaging and at least one pretty creepy. The results are highly engaging, and the cake climax is worth the wait … Highly recommended, and kudos to Cinema Space for finding this little gem for its programme of free screening.