Director’s Statement

What drives me as a filmmaker is finding ways to put us inside, to humanize, someone else’s experience; in short to connect us. My own instincts lead me back to food stories again and again because they’re a rich prism through which to understand culture and our relationships to each other.  Food is a conduit, a vehicle that connects people to people, and people to culture. 

My 2015 documentary, City of Gold, is about the late Jonathan Gold, the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Jonathan’s writing gave me a way to understand and love Los Angeles. He wrote about restaurants and food as the gateway to connection and empathy across perceived boundaries in a city bursting with multiple cultures and ethnicities. In my next culinary film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles, decadent cakes became an expression and critique of contemporary excess, and laid bare our longing for community in a world of inequity and exclusion. Food and Country, my third food foray, was prompted by Covid, but it’s not actually about Covid; it’s about the people behind our food. Transcending blue state/red state politics, their resilience and ingenuity are the heart of this film. 

In March, 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, I saw that independent restaurants were the canary in the coalmine and began to worry about the restaurant owners, chefs, and workers with whom I had grown close while making City of Gold. Knowing so many people in the food world with urgent, compelling stories that needed to be told, I felt I had to document their plight. How they would adapt to survive. I wondered how the potential loss of these businesses would change the fabric of our communities and cities. 

Just as I was preparing to film struggling Los Angeles restaurants, storied food writer, Ruth Reichl, reached out to me and said, “I hear we’re working on something similar. Let’s talk.” Ruth was taking a bigger picture approach to the crisis-- grasping right away the devastating impact the pandemic could have on the entire food chain. Ruth and I quickly decided to join forces and began reaching out to pivotal players in food through video calls. Ruth’s stellar reputation as chronicler and voice of American food culture for the last four decades opened doors, but everywhere we turned, it was Ruth’s authenticity, curiosity, and warmth that inspired trust and elicited truth telling. People across the front lines of the food chain and political divides--from the most celebrated chefs, to food equity activists, to farmers and ranchers--wanted to talk with her. And, we would soon learn, they also wanted to open up and confide in her, and even seek solace. But the connection between Ruth and our characters is a two way street. Just as they rely on Ruth, so too does Ruth lean on them for insight and closeness. 

Ruth and I set out to follow the unfolding stories of innovators in every corner of America experimenting to transcend a broken food system. Collectively their story is the story of all independent businesses fighting to survive an ever consolidating industry. Their stories also hold up a mirror. How we make and grow our food tells us who we are as a country, who we are as human beings. 

Laura Gabbert
Director
Food and Country