4.5/5 stars Hasan Hadi makes a striking debut with The President’s Cake. Winning the Iraqi filmmaker the Camera d’Or for best first feature at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, the film perfectly blends the political and the personal to elevate its narrative into something quite profound. Set in Iraq in the early 1990s under Saddam Hussein’s rule, the narrative hinges on the dictator’s decree that his people annually celebrate his birthday. Every April, children in schools are assigned various...