Warm, funny and heartbreaking, The President’s Cake tells the story of a brutal ruler and a girl forced to make him a present in a time of sanctions-induced hardship. Its Iraqi director Hasan Hadi remembers his own fearful childhood

There were no cinemas in Iraq in the 1990s, when Hasan Hadi was growing up under Saddam Hussein’s regime. But he still managed to fall in love with films – after a family member roped him into helping her distribute VHS tapes of banned foreign movies. “I was a kid,” says the 37-year-old, “so no one would suspect me of smuggling. I’d put the tapes up my shirt or in my bag.”

Hadi started secretly watching the films, too, everything from Bruce Lee to Tarkovsky. At night, he crept into the living room after everyone had gone to bed, keeping the volume low in case his family woke up.