Film Review: THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE (2025): A Near-Perfect Drama About a Young Girl’s Assignment in 1990’s Iraq

The President’s Cake Review

The President’s Cake (2025) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Hasan Hadi and starring Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem, Rahim AlHaj and Muthanna Malaghi.

Filmmaker Hasan Hadi’s powerful drama, The President’s Cake, may seem a bit slight on the surface as a couple of young kids seek ingredients to make a cake, but the movie is anything but simplistic in terms of the way it spins its deeply moving tale. Set in 1990’s Iraq around the time of Saddam Hussein’s April 28th birthday, the film features a wonderful performance by young actress Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Lamia, a girl who travels places with her aging grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat). Lamia’s pet rooster, Hindi, plays a major role in the movie as the one companion who never seems to let Lamia down in times of despair.

Lamia’s young companion on her journey to make the cake is a boy named Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem). Lamia and Saeed take off to try to get the ingredients (eggs, flour, etc.) to make a birthday cake that is demanded by Lamia’s school for Hussein’s birthday celebration. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong as Lamia and Saeed try to pawn off a watch for money at one point and, eventually, head to a bakery to buy a cake. The cashier believes the money the kids received is counterfeit and confiscates it which leaves them back to square one.

Saeed and Lamia fight due to the situations they find themselves immersed in and, at one point, Saeed throws a drink he got for her off a roof top out of frustration. Lamia is dressed up with nowhere exciting to go and follows one dead-end path after another that all seem to go nowhere in fulfilling her quest to create the wanted birthday cake. Will she finally make the cake, though and at what cost?

Hindi gets picked up by a local shop where such roosters meet unfortunate fates. A seemingly kind man gives her back the rooster (and some sugar) but he wants something much more frightening from her in return for the supposed “good-will” he offers her.

Meanwhile, Bibi may not be able to handle raising Lamia anymore and Lamia finds herself being held by the authorities for supposedly being a thief. The President’s Cake has the same dark and humorous qualities that an American film like Little Miss Sunshine had. Both films feature optimistic young girls as their protagonists who end up losing a loved one and realizing their dreams are much further from their reach than they may have anticipated. I only mention Little Miss Sunshine because it also features a little girl as its main character. The President’s Cake is much more politically charged and much different in terms of the way many aspects of it plays out. For one, the ending here is a lot less optimistic than the other film.

Hasan Hadi has crafted a delicate story of a girl with hope who finds herself lost in a maze that she cannot emerge from successfully. Baneen Ahmed Nayyef turns in one of the most memorable young acting performances of the year. Lamia’s bond with her grandmother, her friend and her rooster are all explored as she tries to make something happen against formidable odds which are stacked against her. The President’s Cake has a disturbing ending where two classmates stare at each other as hell is breaking loose around them. No other film, for me, leaves a more unsettling feeling this year than this one does. That’s because the main character’s innocence is lost at the end and so is the life of someone very dear to her as well.

If The President’s Cake is about lost innocence, it is also about the reign of Hussein and how his people had to give in to ridiculous demands. The cake is like a MacGuffin here. While obtaining a cake is absolutely important, the movie is not simply about getting the ingredients for a cake. It’s more about the harsh times that our lead character, Lamia, finds herself living in. There’s a lot of beautiful hope within her that often gets suppressed by the events that occur in the movie. If she’s trying to maintain a friendship, stay close to her grandmother and make a cake, the likelihood of her getting all three things by the film’s end is next to impossible. If the rooster makes it by her side at the end, she’d be lucky.

The President’s Cake is a wonderfully constructed film. This movie features a lot of sorrow and heartbreak and the fact that our lead character is dressed in a way that seems like she is doing fine, she’s not. She wears a grin and tries her best under challenging circumstances. When she finally cries at the end, the audience will feel her pains and passions as well and understand that even though she has triumphed in one way, she has been defeated in countless other ways. Juxtaposed against Hussein’s birthday celebration, we wonder who should really have been celebrated at this time in history and why Lamia had to suffer for Hussein’s own satisfaction which he’ll probably never even know about. This movie will tear your heart out with its emotional ending and is a true must-see.

Rating: 9/10

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