The President's Cake

The President's Cake (2025) is a drama you can watch online on iFILM. In 1990s Iraq, crushed by sanctions and food shortages, a teacher orders nine-year-old Lamia to bake a cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday — and there will be consequences if she fails.

The assignment is as absurd as it is frightening: flour, sugar and eggs are near-luxuries in a country wrecked by war. Lamia sets off with her grandmother to a neighboring town to scrounge up the ingredients, and a simple errand swells into a small odyssey across markets, strangers' courtyards and an adult world a child sees with no filter. She has to bargain, beg and outsmart everyone just to avoid letting anyone down — or getting caught.

The debut feature from Iraqi director Hasan Hadi watches a dictatorship through a kid's eyes, and that quiet, ground-level fear lands harder than any slogan could. It's shot almost like documentary, with non-professional actors on real streets. A rare film from a country whose cinema we almost never get to see. Stream The President's Cake (2025) online on iFILM.