The President’s Cake, Iraq’s snubbed submission for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards, is a slice of life competing with disturbing conditions.

Two narratives, both of equal weight, run parallel to each other: a docudrama about Iraq’s living conditions while under the regime of Saddam Hussein, and a young student, Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), trying to find and collect ingredients to bake a cake commemorating their great leader’s birthday with intimidating consequences. In terms of educating the audience and offering a tense thriller, this feature-length debut from director Hasan Hadi always delivers on a visual scale and on a more intimate level. Desperate characters help each other while, also, keeping frank with their conversations about expectations. The narrative works with a degree of convenience when certain arcs need to intersect but, considering how the walls are always closing in on this culture, the audience doesn’t mind when Hadi offers levity.

The finale is brilliant, and very hard to shake. After watching Lamia scramble to make this coveted dessert, which includes her coming-of-age, the audience is left to reflect on how significance can quickly tumble into irrelevance. And no matter when that epiphany happens for the characters in this film, their livelihoods depend on appeasing. They’re forced to compromise their integrity and push through to find a future and, possibly, hope.

As a snapshot of the human spirit pushed to the brink, The President’s Cake is a near masterpiece.

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie