The President's Cake (12A)

Reminiscent of classic works of neorealist cinema, Iraqi writer-director Hasan Hadi’s outstanding debut is a portrait of life under dictatorship as seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl. Winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes, it was Iraq’s submission for Best International Feature at the upcoming Oscars.

Iraq, 1991: Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) lives in poverty with her ailing grandmother, Bibi (Waheeda Thabet Khreiba). Disaster strikes when she’s asked to supply the cake for her school class’s mandatory celebration of Saddam Hussein’s birthday. Bibi and Lamia can’t afford the ingredients — and the last family that didn’t comply was dragged through the streets…. Hadi’s compassionate, tragicomic film balances light and dark in its child’s eye view of the moral collapse resulting from scarcity and authoritarianism.