This is a fantastic movie. Nine year old Lamia has been chosen from among her classmates to bake a cake to celebrate President Saddam Hussein’s birthday. We do not know what happened to her parents, as she lives with her very old grandmother who has just lost her job working in the fields. Lamia and her grandmother are ‘Marsh Arabs’ who live on the wetlands of the Tigris-Euphrates river system. Even though Saddam was later to punish the Marsh Arabs for insurrection by draining the swamplands, the people of the river at the time of this film have great fear of the President, and Lamia knows that she and her grandmother will be punished if the cake is not made. But where are they going to pay for the ingredients? Her grandmother takes her into the city to buy the ingredients but Lamia learns that she is to be left with a woman as a shopworker and she runs away. So the film turns into a quest to find the ingredients, while at the same time keeping herself safe. I had the same feeling watching this as I did with the movie ‘Lion’ when the little boy is left in the station: such an innocent child in a world where people are so suspect. The end of the movie left me speechless: speechless in anger at the corruption and disparity in wealth between the Iraqi elite and Saddam Hussein in particular, who had not need of this cake; and speechless with sorrow at the ending which made my heart sink.
My rating: 5/5 Really, really good.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 