Cert - 12, Run-time - 1 hour 45 minutes

Director - Hasan Hadi

NINETIES Iraq, nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) is tasked with making the class cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday, or her family will face punishment. However, ingredients aren't cheap or easy to come by.

Saddam Hussein's face looms over The President's Cake. If not on the wall of every room it's as a mural spread across the side of a building. A reminder of the threat faced by nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) if she fails to make a cake for her class to celebrate Hussein's birthday.

When her name is called out in class everyone is reminded about what happened to the kid who failed to bring one of the required gifts last year. In monotone unison the children repeat that he and his family were dragged.

The items to make the cake may be few but they're also scarce; and expensive. Lamia lives with her grandmother (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) who already struggles to feed the pair - leading to a crushing separation of the pair part way through. Leading Lamia and schoolfriend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem) to filter through the nearby markets. Each shop and stall a growing reminder of threat and fear.

As the children go from place to place it would be easy to strike a farcical tone. The base narrative - finding ingredients for a cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday - sound as if they could play out comedically, until reminders of the overhanging threat of death in the wake of failure. There's a simple story at hand here, one with a good deal of emotion thanks to the context which seamlessly plays in the background, alongside a couple of occasionally funny moments to keep up consistent movement in the drama.

Yet, the context also comes through in a fantastic central child performance from Nayyef who gets right to the heart of a child aware of the tragedy around her, and that she could face. Confronting disgruntled shopkeepers, risky heists and a missing chicken along the way. Holding on to the connection that she has with her grandmother, looking after her almost as much as she's looked after.

Misfortune rears its head more and more, but it's more emotionally gripping than bleak. Heartfelt questions met with silence have a particularly striking effect. We worry and fear for Lamia, we feel her tension and disappointment. My engagement with the film was quietly formed yet powerful. With much of that effect, again, coming from the simple contextual reminders which help events move from one to the next.

Even in the closing stages the overriding feeling of The President's Cake is one of emotional tension. Wonderfully created by the cast, particularly the lead, and writer-director Hasan Hadi's quiet look at the poverty and unease struck in struggling 90s Iraq. Caught in the different meanings of death and loss which hang over the film and its characters and their separations. All while the president gets his cake.

Four stars