All right bakers, today we’re going to make a dictator cake. What I want you to do is collect all the ingredients from each of your fellow competitors, make the biggest cake that humanly possible and proclaim it the best ever no matter what it tastes like …
Saddam Hussein was an asshole. He was ruthless dictator, a murderer, and a war criminal. I’m not a huge fan of capital punishment, but there are exceptions to every rule. Saddam certainly deserved his fate.
Perhaps understated was Saddam Hussein’s enormous ego. Tell me; does that remind you of anyone? Because it should. This film was made with an eye on Trump and the $25M birthday bash he threw himself, for Saddam and Donald are not unalike. Can you envision a United States where Donald Trump forces all citizens to celebrate his birthday with songs and parades and cakes and loyalty tests? I sure can.
But I digress.
Nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahamd Nayyef) just won the poorhouse lottery. She and her grandmother live alone in a hut in an Iraqi riverboat community. They own what they need to live, and almost nothing else. Twinkies would constitute a luxury in this land. Being the 1990s, however, all Iraqis are required to celebrate the birthday of Saddam Hussein. Her authoritarian gradeschool teacher (who already looks a great deal like Saddam Hussein) holds a lottery to decide which “lucky” children get to provide the unnecessary affectations for the big day ahead. One kid wins “balloons.” One kid wins “streamers.” Lamia “wins” cake. Her teacher gives her both vague and specific instructions on how the cake has to be made. Bottom line? The Lamia family can’t afford it?
Imagine going into debt simply because the leader of your county has a big ego.
Wait. We don’t have to. Americans are doing that right now. As of this writing, the government is shut down. You can blame whomever you wants for the shutdown, many do. [Psst … if your party owns all three branches of government and the government shuts down, it’s embarrassing to claim the other party is to blame.] But the truth is everything that got us to where we are, from The “Big Beautiful Bill” to lying sycophant Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House, has Trump’s fingerprints all over it. As a result, Americans are going to starve. Americans are going to lose health care. Americans are going to die. And I defy anyone out there to present a single piece of evidence that Trump cares.
Again, I digress. I’m simply showing how relevant this film is here and now despite the fact that it is set in Iraq in the 1990s.
So what do you need to make a big cake? Flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder. Well, maybe a few more ingredients if you’re me, but those are the 
basics. Lamia and grandmother have none of them. They will have to sell family possessions to come up with the goods. Grandma even tries to pawn Lamia off on a more supportive family. Horrified, Lamia splits. Super, now there’s a nine-year-old girl alone in a city completely transfixed by a duty to collect ingredients for a cake she can’t make with money she doesn’t have.
Oh, hey, there’s my classmate Saeed (Sajad Mahamad Qasem). Luckily, he’s a complete ne’er-do-well. That will come in handy when Granny is hospitalized.
The President’s Cake feels like a student film with regards to quality and flow, but I guarantee there is well-meaning heart behind it. Did writer/director Hasan Hadi intend to make a political allegory mirroring the current United States dilemma? I doubt it. MY guess is Hadi wanted to make a coming-of-age reflection of how much Saddam sucked during their own childhood. Lucky for us, this picture couldn’t be more apt for where we are. Too bad nobody is gonna see it.
There once lived a poor Iraqi child
With a dilemma most would consider mild
Instructed to make
A huge birthday cake
She instead had an experience most wild
Not Rated, 105 Minutes
Director: Hasan Hadi
Writer: Hasan Hadi
Genre: Movies you have to explain to MAGA as to why they’re important
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Historians
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Dictators
