COVID 19: The Future of Food
2020 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Jérémie Battaglia
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative
Restaurant owner Lil MacPherson and farmer Dave Kranenburg discuss how COVID-19 changed Canadian eating habits, local food interest, and cooking during the pandemic's second wave.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A pandemic food doc from 2020 feels like the exact consensus pick everyone else made—two talking heads processing a moment we've all already processed to death. Where's the formal provocation, the structural gamble that makes you reconsider what this footage can do?
Battaglia locates the essay film's quiet power in restraint: two voices, the texture of a specific regional moment, a considered structure that lets eating and labor speak across the second wave's uncertainty. It's the kind of formally aware documentary that builds its argument through juxtaposition rather than assertion.
The smart move here is probably the sound design or how Battaglia frames the physical space—some intimate technical choice that transforms a straightforward interview into something that *feels* like it matters beyond its subject. Hard to say without seeing, but if there's a singular decision that elevates this, that's where the film lives.