La Cocina (in-person & online)

Raúl Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Diaz, Motell Foster

Dreams and desperation collide in a Manhattan restaurant kitchen, shot in fine-grained black and white. Like Boiling Point or the sensationally popular FX series The Bear, Güeros director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina takes on the cauldron of feeling and fury that is the modern professional kitchen, but shifts the camera away from high-end cheffing towards the phenomenally tough lives of the immigrant workers who make so many restaurants viable.

Loosely derived from Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play The Kitchen, it’s set in The Grill, a busy Times Square restaurant where back-of-house staff chase elusive American dreams. New to the city, Estela (Anna Díaz) pitches up seeking work. When money goes missing from the till, savvy, ambitious Pedro (Raúl Briones) comes under suspicion. Meanwhile, hostess Julia (Rooney Mara) grapples with her own commitments. A world unto itself, and a microcosm of contemporary capitalism with its own complex hierarchy of status and needs, the relentless pace of The Grill’s kitchen threatens to break those who keep it running.

Informed by Ruizpalacios’ own back-of-house experience (working at a “horrific” theme cafe in London), La Cocina pays tribute to the immigrant workers who fulfil people’s culinary desires while fighting for a place in a world that often refuses to acknowledge their existence. It’s a claustrophobic, yet captivating portrait of life behind the scenes.