Nine-year-old Lamia lives in the Mesopotamian Marshes with her grandmother Bibi and pet rooster Hindi, scraping by in 1990s Iraq, battered by sanctions after the Kuwait invasion.
Schools nationwide get orders to bake cakes for Saddam Hussein’s birthday, a compulsory honor that spells trouble for anyone short on basics like flour, eggs, or sugar.
Lamia dodges selection at first but ends up picked anyway, facing school punishment or worse if she fails, since the last family who botched it got paraded through the streets like animals.
Desperate, Bibi drags her to the city to pawn her off as a foster kid for better prospects, but Lamia bolts and links up with street-smart friend Saeed, who pickpockets at a rundown theme park with his dad.
They hawk her father’s watch for cash, dodging shady adults from fake-money dealers to a creepy butcher eyeing more than meat. Bibi roams Baghdad frantically, begging indifferent cops too busy with birthday prep to care about one lost girl, while taxi driver Jasim jumps in to help track her down.
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Baneen Ahmad Nayyef nails Lamia with a mix of pluck and panic, carrying the 102-minute runtime through marsh canoes to urban chaos shot vividly by Tudor Vladimir Panduru.
Sajad Mohamad Qasem brings scrappy energy as Saeed, while Waheed Thabet Khreibat grounds Bibi’s worry with quiet strength. Hasan Hadi’s script, co-written with Oscar vet Eric Roth, pulls from his own kid memories of a classmate ruined by a similar flop.
Festival Glory Hits Historic Highs
The world premiere at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight snagged the Audience Award and Caméra d’Or for best debut, the first Iraqi film ever in that section. Sony Pictures Classics snapped up North American rights quickly, kicking off qualifying runs in New York and LA from December 2025 ahead of a wider February 2026 release.
Iraq picked it as its Best International Feature entry for the 98th Oscars, landing on the December shortlist with 15 slots from 86 countries, a total first for any Iraqi narrative flick.
Wins piled up after: Golden Starfish for Narrative Feature at Hamptons, plus honorable mention for Nayyef’s breakout; Best Debut at Stockholm; and multiple jury prizes at CineFest Miskolc, including FIPRESCI and Ecumenical nods.
The Hamptons jury praised how it spotlights the dictatorship’s violence through the eyes of a girl trapped between tradition and fear. Sundance Labs and the Doha Film Institute backed the production, with exec producers like Chris Columbus, Marielle Heller, and Eric Roth boosting cred.
Rotten Tomatoes logs 100% from 29 critics, calling it a tragicomic gem with fluent action and poignant empathy for folks in the crosshairs.
The Hollywood Reporter and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists spotlighted Nayyef’s expressive range from joy to heartbreak, plus the film’s astute take on humanity under pressure. State media hailed the shortlist as Iraqi cinema’s resurgence; eyes are now on nominations.
Sweet Bites Hide Sour Core
ScreenRant pegs it as enjoyable and propulsive but flippant with context, churning Italian neorealist tropes for festival crowds over fresh insight.
Everyone from kids to cops seems corrupt or predatory, painting 1990s Iraq as post-2003 chaos with rampant bribes and moral rot that critics say rings false to the era’s tighter controls. Baghdad writer Nabil Salih slammed it in Jacobin for peddling stereotypes of decadent, despotic Oriental hellholes that match Western biases more than real history.
Comic irony shines in Lamia’s clock-racing hustle amid scarcity, blending bleak laughs with real tragedy, yet some darker beats, like the pedophile butcher, tip into heavy territory without full payoff.
Hadi aims to counter negative Iraq views rooted in his southern marshes and Baghdad youth, but inaccuracies let viewers dodge complicity in the sanctions’ toll. The final scenes nod to the constant U.S. shadow, but the bulk stays acidic on locals.
Shot entirely in Iraq with mostly non-pro locals, it captures period details from war fog to birthday parades, yet non-specificity makes the depleted land feel interchangeable.
Lamia’s honest streak crumbles against scams, highlighting regime rot, but the film risks flavorless dessert status by prioritizing uplift over unflinching truth. Still, its resilience yarn hooks, especially for Western eyes new to Iraqi stories, flaws notwithstanding.
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