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film · Wednesday 29 July 2026 · 7:30pm 
The President's Cake - Solstice Arts Centre Navan
At Solstice Arts Centre · Railway Street, Navan, Co. Meath
At Solstice Arts Centre · Railway Street, Navan, Co. Meath
ACCESS Cinema brings one of the most talked-about international films of recent years to Solstice Arts Centre in Navan this summer. The President’s Cake is a debut feature from Iraqi writer-director Hasan Hadi that won the Audience Award and the Camera d’Or at Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes 2025 - the first Iraqi feature ever to screen in that prestigious sidebar. It was also selected as Iraq’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. For anyone who goes to the cinema for films that genuinely stay with you, this is the one to make the effort for.
Nine-year-old Lamia is selected at school for a dubious honour: she must bake a cake for Saddam Hussein’s birthday. The film is set in 1990s Iraq, during the period of crippling sanctions that followed the Gulf War, and Lamia’s journey - travelling from her remote village to the city with her grandmother and a pet rooster to find the ingredients - becomes a quietly devastating portrait of ordinary life under a dictatorship. Hasan Hadi shot the film entirely in Iraq using mostly non-professional actors, which gives it an immediacy and warmth that critical write-ups have described as balancing the whimsical and the heartbreaking in equal measure. The tone mixes dry comedy with genuine tenderness. Cert 12A, 105 minutes, in Arabic with English subtitles.
The screening is presented by ACCESS Cinema, which has been running the film programme at Solstice Arts Centre for close to 20 years. The venue screens a range of international and Irish cinema on a 4K Sony projector with Dolby Surround Sound - a proper cinema setup rather than a function-room arrangement.
Solstice Arts Centre is on Railway Street in Navan town centre, a short walk from the bus station. Navan is well served by Bus Eireann from Dublin city centre, and the drive from Dublin on the N3 takes around 45 minutes. On-street parking is available on Railway Street and along the surrounding town-centre streets; paid car parks are nearby if needed.
Navan sits at the confluence of the Boyne and Blackwater rivers and makes a good base for the wider county. There is more to see in Navan and across Co. Meath.
Heading to Solstice Arts Centre in Navan? Meath has plenty more to see. Read the Navan area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.