Film “A Cake for the President” shows the Iraq War from a child’s perspective

This film begins with a fantastic panorama: there is a wide, winding river that makes its way sublimely. The almost cloudless sky is reflected on the surface, the banks are lined here and there with palm trees. A lively hustle and bustle can be heard from there. It is the floodplains of the Tigris that you can see. However, if you only know Iraq from the news, you will hardly associate its idyllic sight with the country.

Hasan Hadi grew up in these marshlands. The story of his debut film is set in his childhood Iraq. If you see the pictures that Hadi finds for it, you immediately believe them, that everything looked exactly the same, everything could have happened exactly the same. Many of the locations where the director filmed in Baghdad were only renovated shortly afterwards. With “A Cake for the President” he shows his homeland from the inside around 1990.

There is the beauty of nature and children paddling in boats to school. The sound of the oudthe stringed instrument that is so typical of the country’s music. And also the man from the news and history books who they call Saddam here and who smiles from every wall while teachers steal apples from their students’ bags because people lack food because of the sanctions. The picturesque entrance scene is soon disrupted by American fighter jets. Their roar drowns out the voices of the people who live on the banks of the river.

Like nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), through whose eyes we experience everyday life in a permanent state of emergency. She is an orphan and lives in poor conditions with her grandmother. The girl seems to have gotten rid of something like childlike wonder at an early age. She has a rooster, Hindi, and a boyfriend named Said.

Not all characters will live to see the end of this fairytale tale, which is based on facts that only dictators can create: Two days before Saddam Hussein’s birthday, Lamia is chosen to bake the eponymous cake for the president. (A lot that hit enough real children.) “Congratulations Lamia,” says the teacher, reminding the class that he has a duty to report anyone who refuses to do their task. “Don’t blame me if you get the same punishment as Rasul.” Nobody has to ask which one it was.

The cake needs to be baked

Lamia has no sugar, no eggs, no money, no choice at all. The plot of the film has its trigger. People who go to the cinema will be at the starting point Fatih Akin’s latest work “Amrum” remember. Here, too, you experience the effects of war from the perspective of a child; in Amrum they have to find ingredients for honey bread. In Baghdad, however, the whole thing seems a lot more urgent and is developing correspondingly more dynamically. This cake must be baked, at all costs.

Hadi leaves little doubt that women and children, especially girls, must pay first in such a situation. The film tells about it without overly emotionalizing, which only makes the events more disturbing. The fact that it doesn’t overwhelm the story is thanks to a series of stable characters who always bring light into the darkness. The director also allows small escapes from the tightly told plot, for example when Lamia and Said spontaneously follow a singer’s performance in a café.

“A Cake for the President” leaves room for the things that every life needs, especially in a state of emergency: humor and play. A spark of hope. All of this gives the film an energy that speaks more about life than about death.