Life under Saddam Hussein: ‘A child being asked to bake a cake without flour or sugar was not absurd’

The President’s Cake arrives as both a rapturously received debut feature and a quiet corrective to Iraqi history’s frequent on-screen pulverisation. (American Sniper, anyone? The Hurt Locker?)

Directed by Hasan Hadi, the picture reframes life under Saddam Hussein’s regime not through retrospective othering but through the everyday pressures imposed on ordinary people, particularly children, as economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council bit during the early 1990s. There are ups among the downs.

“Life under dictatorship is like that,” Hadi says. “Moments of joy coexist with fear and sudden danger. People adapt, they cope, they laugh, until something happens and everything becomes very real again.”

Set following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the film centres on a deceptively simple premise: every year, schoolchildren are selected to make offerings for Saddam’s birthday. Being chosen is not necessarily an honour. In a country undone by trade blockages, it can represent an impossible burden.

When nine-year-old Lamia is tasked with baking a cake in a country facing extreme shortages of sugar, flour and eggs, her assignment evolves into a journey that exposes the material and emotional cost of political loyalty.

“This idea of a child being asked to bake a cake without flour or sugar was not absurd.