DRAMA; 1hr 45min (Arabic with subtitles)
STARRING: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Sajad Mohamad Qasem, Waheed Thabet Khreibat
So near… Qasem and Nayyef (with Hindi)
Although an economically sanctioned Iraq is mired in poverty in the 1990s, lavish celebrations for President Saddam Hussein’s birthday are still a must. Two days before the momentous event, to the obvious dismay of nine-year-old Lamia (Nayef), she is randomly selected at school to bake a cake in honour of the dictator with ingredients — eggs, flour, sugar, baking powder — that neither she nor her grandmother Bibi (Khreibat) have a prayer of possessing. How can she refuse? “With our blood and our souls, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Saddam!” her rural primary school has screamed in unison before class, as children throughout the country are compelled to do with 100 per cent conviction.
To afford the cake batter ingredients, Lamia and Bibi must scrounge what possessions they can to sell in Baghdad. After they make their way there and Lamia learns that an exhausted Bibi is planning to give her up to a couple better able to take care of her, she reflexively does a runner with her chatty rooster, Hindi. This does nothing for her dismal prospects, but the elfin Lamia is more resourceful than she looks, her survival drive honed by the imperatives of deprivation.
Joining forces with her schoolfriend Saeed (Qasem), whose street smarts are likewise nothing to sneeze at, Lamia sets about getting what she needs by whatever means necessary. The entire escapade has the shambolic feel of a fever dream, except that everyone is painfully awake and no liberating leaps of logic are forthcoming. First-time director Hasan Hadi’s casting of intuitive non-professionals brings an immediacy no actors could reproduce. Every ragtag minute seems siphoned from life in a varnish-free reflection of an unhinged and obliterative world.
