The President's Cake Review: Iraqi Oscar Shortlisted Tragicomedy's Sweetness Belies Empty Calories

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Even if you didn't catch the Caméra d'Or winning The President's Cake at Cannes this year, it's likely you've already seen the likes of it before. Hasan Hadi's debut feature, which has been shortlisted for Best International Film at the 97th Academy Awards, is a child-led, social drama of the Italian neorealist tradition, which takes place inside a land degraded by economic sanctions and Western military incursion. The problem is that the film's trappings are rote, and seemingly built for the festival circuit that is celebrating it. It is, in other words, made for Western eyes, as evidenced most clearly by its anachronistic portrayal of an Iraq that seems more like post 2003 than the early 1990s in which it is set.


Source: https://screenrant.com/the-presidents-c ... ie-review/