"The President's Cake" Is a Neorealist Treasure from Iraq

"The Iraqi film "The President's Cake" is a great new entry in the vital cinematic tradition exemplified by Italian neorealism. At and after the end of the Second World War, Italian filmmakers responded with a new freedom to the traumas of Fascism and German Occupation as well as to the crises of American intervention amid Italy's efforts to rebuild physically, politically, and morally."

"Like many of the essential neorealist films (such as " Paisan" and " Shoeshine"), "The President's Cake" is intently focussed on catastrophic poverty issuing from war. It's centered on the plights of children unmoored from overwhelmed or absent families, and it's keenly attentive to the emotional and practical havoc wrought by a ruthless dictator. The movie is set in the span of a few days, in April, 1990,"

The film is set in April 1990 and compresses events leading to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, U.N. sanctions, and subsequent bombing into a composite timeframe. It focuses on Lamia, a nine-year-old exceptional student who lives with her grandmother in a mudhif in Iraq's southern marshlands. The narrative emphasizes catastrophic poverty, children unmoored from overwhelmed or absent families, and the emotional and practical havoc inflicted by a ruthless dictator. The director brings complex, surprising characters to life, lends the locale an aesthetic iconography, and renders personal identity inextricable from the historical forces that shaped or deformed it.

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