They did their calculations, Trump and his army could take over Canada in less than a week. It was the Canadian army which “modeled the invasion scenario”. But some say that in two days the matter would be over. For Mexico, knowing that “there is not a Mexican general who resists a cannonade of 50,000 pesos”, it would not take more than a few hours; It’s me who calculates. We are here, on the verge of being completely surrounded. Because we can no longer seriously consider the United States as a democracy. How long do we still have, in Europe, to be able to afford a Magnum classic white chocolate at the cinema while watching the distressing spectacle of these diets, all the same and all different, which surround us and will end up eating us; it’s not a question, it’s an anxiety that the cinema revives and distracts at the same time.
Two films give us news of life under dictatorships: Le Mage du Kremlinby Olivier Assayas, released last week, and The President’s Cakeby Hasan Hadi which comes out next week. The first explains how things went between Putin and his advisor, the second tells how things went under the reign of Saddam Hussein for Lamia and Nayyed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), two schoolboys of around 10 years old. Lamia is drawn by the teacher (a village Saddam Hussein) to make the dictator’s birthday cake. Eggs, flour, sugar and baking powder. She sets off in search of the ingredients, her rooster under her arm and Nayyed, her lover, at her feet. The two children then offer us a street movie of the most dizzying misfortunes, hopes, absurdities and, from time to time, the two children play to see who will blink first. The historical reconstruction (it takes place in the 1990s) is perfect. Hasan Hadi explains: “Iraq is one of the easiest countries in the world to make a film. You can get free filming permits in places for which big-budget productions would be willing to pay millions.” I cannot advise you enough to read the interview given by the director in the press kit. It’s the story of the film, with the twists and turns of filming, how he found the children, how he shot the bistro scene: the very place where Saddam Hussein went to drink coffee with his friends when he was young. When asked about the dreaminess of his film, Hasan Hadi replies that he grew up in a village where the houses floated on the water, where he went to school by boat, at night, the stars, the symphony of animals: “a Disney film. And yet, it’s true. This place exists. These people exist. And they have lived like that for millennia.”
This story, in its orality, makes you want to watch the film again and above all, it makes you hope that Hasan Hadi will make a new film based on this little novel. In the meantime, I return to the dictatorship which forces children to make birthday cakes, to risk their lives for it, to end up in prison, to argue while they love each other, to get lost in the souk, to only find help from a poultry seller who promises Samia this baking powder that she needs for her cake, and who gently leads her towards a porn movie theater… I won’t tell you the rest.
There would certainly also be a film to be made about how Olivier Assayas finally managed to make his film. He will then have to put in everything that was missing from his Do you like Kremlin : action, the unexpected, suspense, humor. As for the facts and the fear they must arouse, we will turn to the extensible documentary by Antoine Viatkine Putin’s Revenge : updated, it is announced on France Télévisions on February 3.
