Wow this one is really a slow burn, and not at all the lighthearted, child focused story that I was expecting.

Director Hasan Hadi in his first feature gives us a story set in the prime years of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Even though American sanctions and bombing has meant a shortage of food and medicine and an excess of trauma for citizens, everyone is expected to celebrate Saddam Hussein’s birthday as if they really mean it.

Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) lives in a reed hut with her grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), obviously living on the poverty line but attending school and working hard to keep afloat. It is the kind of environment and basic existence that could have been the same for 2000 years. At school, where there is required fervour for Hussein as the saviour of Iraq, the children have to put their names into a draw for who will provide the food for the celebrations for his birthday.

We can see immediately how this is a problem. For Lamia, there is no food even for her to have lunch during the day and, as we fear, her name is drawn for the great honour of making the President’s cake. Her grandmother seems to take it in her stride, writing a list of ingredients that include eggs, flour, sugar, and baking powder and then they set off the next day to the town, Lamia thinks to buy ingredients.

Her grandmother, who can see further into the future than her, has other ideas though and this starts a sequence of increasingly difficult events for Lamia, her friend Saaed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem) and Bibi. Along the way we get a glimpse into Iraqi society, particularly the inequities and bribes that are needed to get even a fraction of what you need. Lamia as a child, and as an obviously poor child, is particularly vulnerable.

There are moments of humour and some exquisitely beautiful scenes and imagery. Hadi never reduces the key characters to stereotypes and we get a feel for the pull of national pride and wanting to fit in and the complexities of living on the margins.

What I wasn’t expecting was the slow, slow ramping up of tension as we begin to have real concerns for Lamia’s wellbeing. It all comes together in some final scenes that are intensely meaningful and transform the film into something so much more than it seems at the beginning. 

I expect I’m not the only audience member who can see echoes of the glorification and enforced adulation of Hussein in what we are seeing in the US at the moment. It is really sad the number of films I’ve watched over the past two weeks at the festival that show totalitarian regimes and for the first time, I can see aspects of it in what should be a country that is a leader for democracy.