El americano
2017 · 11m
Directed by Santiago Fierro
Genres: comedy, historical
There are several versions of the history of the Americano, the flagship dish of Arequipa, and this fiction tells it in a mischievous, jocular way.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A food origin myth told as comedy instead of reverence—completely inverts the earnest documentary impulse, and the mischief is the whole point. This is what happens when you stop genuflecting to history and start playing with it.
The film sits interestingly within a lineage of essayistic food cinema, though its whimsy occasionally undercuts the formal rigor one might expect from a meditation on culinary folklore and regional identity.
The decision to treat competing versions of the Americano's history as equally valid comedy fodder rather than resolvable fact lets an 11-minute piece breathe with genuine lightness—that refusal to arbitrate is what makes it work.