For those of you from Australia who might be interested, The President’s Cake was screened at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2025 and the Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2025. It also should be noted that The President’s Cake was the Official submission of Iraq for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 98th Academy Awards in 2026.

Now the decision to watch really was a spur of the moment “why not?” Kind of a decision. For the record, no I have not watched any Iraqi movies before. As cynical as it might sound, I’m of the age were my knowledge of Iraq extends to the fact that in the 90s over the course of a series of presidents America invaded Iraq to divert public opinion (depending on your point of view). Now despite all of the invasions according to the vision that writer/director Hasan Hadi (directing his first feature length movie) brought to the screen Iraq really seems like a beautiful country. The only complaint I have about the movie that though yes there were stakes for the plot, the movie didn’t seem to have any tension until the final third of the movie.Then the movie went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. Is this due to Director inexperience? Perhaps not, we might be able to hang this on my lack of familiarity with Iraqi cinema. The President’s Cake is another great example of how young actors with limited experience tend to give great performances. Both Baneen Ahmad Nayyef and Sajad Mohamad Qasem as Lamia and Saeed were great together. I loved the scenes the pair had together involving “the staring game”. The way the game was shot suggested that something could develop between Lamia and Saeed in about 10 or 15 years.