Could "The President’s Cake" Become Iraq’s First Oscar Nominee?

In his remarkable debut, Hasan Hadi turns a quiet childhood memory into a poetic reflection on loyalty, fear, and survival in 1990s Iraq.

Hasan Hadi, the Iraqi filmmaker, built his first feature film out of a memory that never left him. As a child, his teacher would draw names from a bowl to decide which student must bake a birthday cake for the President. Hadi remembers being lucky because his task was only to bring flowers, but he also recalls the fear and pressure placed on whoever was chosen. Some children even bribed their way out of the draw. Imagine a nine-year-old girl carrying the weight of a nation’s loyalty on her shoulders. She does not understand why, yet she must serve the ideology, the party, and the leader. This is where The President’s Cake begins.

Could “The President’s Cake” Become Iraq’s First Oscar Nominee? - Illustrated by Souzian Dispatch

Set during the harsh sanctions of the 1990s, this quiet Iraqi drama has become one of the most talked-about debuts of the year. It is a film that turns survival into poetry, unfolding in a world where childhood is shaped by fear, scarcity, and the invisible reach of politics. Lamia, a nine-year-old girl, is chosen to bake the President’s birthday cake. Together with her friend Saeed, she crosses the dusty roads and the flooded marshes of southern Iraq, searching for the impossible: sugar, flour, and hope.

Between Reality and Imagination

There is something deeply personal in how Hadi looks at Iraq, not through tragedy but through the eyes of a child who still dares to imagine. The President’s Cake captures this feeling with honesty and tenderness. Every frame feels like an act of remembering. Hadi has said he wanted to document reality as it was, to rebuild the world of his childhood with complete authenticity. The film was shot entirely in the Mesopotamian Marshes, a place both real and mythical, the cradle of civilization and a symbol of loss. The camera moves between water and dust, between dream and document, creating a language that feels both poetic and raw.

These are not trained actors. Their faces carry the truth of a country that has seen too much. Baneen Ahmed Nayyef, who plays Lamia, was found through a one-minute phone video sent to the director just two weeks before filming. Sajad Mohamad Qasem, who plays Saeed, was discovered by chance in a café, his eyes full of curiosity and fatigue. Their performances are unfiltered and instinctive, untouched by acting technique. In their innocence, Hadi found the honesty he was searching for.

Premiering at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, the film was warmly received for its mix of tenderness and realism. Critics praised its visual grace and emotional restraint, calling it one of the most distinctive debuts of the year. As The Film Stage wrote, “Among the best things in The President’s Cake are the colors: the deep red of a rooster’s comb, the golden haze of early light, captured with tenderness and precision.” (The Film Stage, Rory O’Connor, 2025).

A Hope for Iraq’s Voice on the World Stage

I truly hope this film reaches the stage of the Academy Awards as Iraq’s submission for Best International Feature. It is not only a work of cinema, but also an act of documenting history, a reflection of collective endurance and the fragile will to survive. Today, Iraq still struggles to speak freely about its past. Perhaps the growing global recognition of The President’s Cake can open that space, even slightly, for more honest voices to emerge from the country.