{"id":68655,"date":"2026-07-14T18:56:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=68655"},"modified":"2026-07-14T18:56:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:56:58","slug":"review-the-presidents-cake-movie-review-cannes-winning-iraqi-drama-is-an-instant-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=68655","title":{"rendered":"Review | The President\u2019s Cake movie review: Cannes-winning Iraqi drama is an instant classic"},"content":{"rendered":"


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4.5\/5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hasan Hadi makes a striking debut with The President\u2019s Cake<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Winning the Iraqi filmmaker the Camera d\u2019Or for best first feature at last year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival, the film perfectly blends the political and the personal to elevate its narrative into something quite profound.<\/p>\n

Set in Iraq in the early 1990s under Saddam Hussein\u2019s rule, the narrative hinges on the dictator\u2019s decree that his people annually celebrate his birthday. Every April, children in schools are assigned various tasks \u2013 from collecting flowers and fruits to even baking a cake.<\/p>\n

The latter might sound like a pleasant enough exercise, except that international sanctions have left basic ingredients in short supply or even banned.<\/p>\n

That is the dilemma facing nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef), who draws the short straw and must somehow find everything she needs to assemble the cake and bring it to her class.<\/p>\n

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THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE | Official UK & IRE Trailer – In Cinemas 13 February<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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4.5\/5 stars Hasan Hadi makes a striking debut with The President\u2019s Cake. Winning the Iraqi filmmaker the Camera d\u2019Or for best first feature at last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3303,26495,1774,8816,1878,26496,1543,1483,28],"class_list":["post-68655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-cake","tag-canneswinning","tag-classic","tag-drama","tag-instant","tag-iraqi","tag-movie","tag-presidents","tag-review","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}