Hasan Hadi / Iraq 2025 / 105 min / Cert 12A / Subtitles
A tragicomic portrait of life under dictatorship and winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes.
Iraq, 1991: 9-year-old Lamia lives in poverty with her grandmother, in a marshland village of rush-built homes on stilts and everyday journeys by canoe.
Disaster strikes when she is selected by her school to make a cake for Saddam Hussein’s birthday.
Against the odds, she sets out on a determined journey through the big city in search of ingredients, with her friend Saaed and her pet rooster.
This compassionate, tragicomic film balances light and dark in its child’s eye view of the moral collapse resulting from poverty and authoritarianism.
