WOW FILM FESTIVAL
FILMS 2025

The President's Cake (12A)

Director: Hasan Hadi

Iraq/USA/Qatar, 2025, 95', Arabic with English subtitles

In 1990s Iraq, nine-year-old Lamia is picked to bake a compulsory birthday cake for Saddam Hussein, an absurd “honour” with real consequences. Under sanctions and scarcity, she races through markets and checkpoints hunting flour, sugar and eggs, as childhood becomes a negotiation with fear. The President's Cake is told with a child’s-eye clarity: tender, darkly funny, and quietly devastating, a lyrical portrait of resilience and irony that never turns people into statistics. Written and directed by Hasan Hadi, it’s a small odyssey with enormous emotional weight.

'A lovely, sincerely touching work, and one of the most impressive debut features of modern times.' - In Review Online

🏆Directors' Fortnight Audience Award Winner at the Cannes Film Festival 2025
🏆Camera d'Or Winner at the Cannes Film Festival 2025​

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Aberystwyth Arts Centre:

Sat 28/03, 7.45pm

BOOK SOON