For Iraqis who lived through the 1990s, dictator Saddam Hussein’s birthday on April 28 was a disorientating day of celebration and propaganda.
Parties were staged across the sanctions-hit country to mark the occasion, while many public squares and bridges around Baghdad were decorated with coloured lights.
State radio played endless songs to the glory of the ruthless national leader and callers were asked to recount improvised poems in his honour.
In schools, children would be tasked with baking cakes for “Mr President” – the inspiration for a new film by 37-year-old Iraqi director Hasan Hadi which is making waves internationally.
“We had strategies to avoid being picked such as going to the bathroom during the draw, calling in sick, or trying to bribe the teacher,” Hadi told AFP in an interview in Paris.
“The President’s Cake” is his first feature-length film, which picked up a top award at the Cannes Film Festival last year and has gone on earn a wide international release.
Hadi also won over American producer Chris Columbus, whose past credits include “Gremlins” and “Harry Potter”, who fell in love with the movie and signed on as an executive producer.
The story follows nine-year-old Lamia who must brave the dangers of gathering the precious ingredients needed to bake a cake for Saddam and escape punishment for failing.
At the time, Iraq was under crippling UN sanctions after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, putting eggs, flour and sugar beyond the reach of many ordinary Iraqis.
Lamia and her grandmother can barely afford to eat themselves, but the pair set off from their home in the marshlands in southern Iraq to try to track down the unaffordable ingredients.
Hadi drew on his own memories of a country that lacked everything but was required to celebrate each of the dictator’s birthdays.
“This was one of the many contradictions you had to live with,” added Hadi, who only tasted a full-fat cake as a teenager, having grown up eating date-based ones.
He always managed to escape the school baking task, but he remembered the tragic fate of one of his classmates who failed to prepare a cake in time.
He was expelled from school, then conscripted into the Iraqi army as a child before dying a few years later.
“The randomness and the silliness of something as stupid as failing to bake a cake could change your destiny and fate forever,” added Hadi, who grew up watching banned films on smuggled VHS cassettes.
“Dictatorship not only destroys freedom of speech, but it also destroys the elements that make you a straight human,” Hadi explained. “It makes you lie, it makes you a hypocrite, it makes you deceitful and it lasts long after it’s gone.”
Saddam himself would usually appear on state TV on the evening of his birthday, often wearing a white suit, to enjoy an extravagant and lavishly decorated cake that defied the national shortages. With “The President’s Cake”, Hadi hopes to deliver a timely reminder to his country, where Saddam’s rule “hasn’t been explored enough”. The Hollywood Reporter has called it a “tragicomic gem”, while Variety said it was “a compassionate and winsome debut”.
Once a thriving producer of films, Iraqi cinema is still struggling to recover from the chaos the country has endured over the last two decades.
Only around 40 cinemas are estimated to still exist.
“I hope people will be more receptive to Iraqi films in coming years,” said Hadi.