Official submission of Iraq for the 'Best International Feature Film' category of the 98th Academy Awards in 2026.
Winner, Caméra d'Or, Cannes 2025. A rare film from Iraq, this Cannes Director's Fortnight selected charmer is a humorous and touching debut about a young girl's daring quest to bake a cake in the time of Saddam Hussein.
The idea for the movie came from writer/director Hasan Hadi's childhood memories of growing up in Saddam Hussein's Irak, where every year, the teacher would come into class with a bowl and asked the children to put their name on pieces of paper. After putting all the pieces in the bowl, he would draw lots to decide who would have to bake the Presiden'ts cake, or bring fruits, decorations, cleaning products, flowers, etc. One year, Hadi was selected to bring flowers, and he still remembers his family's relief at only having flowers to bring. He also says that corruption was everywhere at that time, so much that all that was needed to not get selected was to do a favor to the teacher, like cutting his hair or fix his bike.
The filmmakers spent months looking for the two children needed for the movie. Hasan Hadi knew he didn't want child actors, he wanted to find children that were like his characters, and film them as they were.
When cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru first came to Irak for location scouting with Hadi, he found a café he liked and started taking pictures, and Sajad Mohamad Qasem (who plays Saheed) appeared in the shot, tired but curious. Hadi asked the kid if he wanted to play in a movie, but he did not understand, which is exactly what Hadi wanted to hear.
The role of Lamia, however, was really hard to fill as it is frowned upon in poor neighborhoods for a girl to be filmed, so much that two weeks from shooting, they still had not cast the part. Then an assistant forwarded Hadi a one-minute video, in which a girl (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) introduced herself, and Hadi knew right away that she was the one.
To properly recreate the Irak from the 1990s, some sets had to be built from scratch, like the marketplace, based on pictures and documents from that time.
