The night before the pandemic lock down in NYC, my friend and I decided to do a blowout dinner. He had just found the missing volume in his collection of extremely rare cookbooks called “Italy In Bocca” which is a set of 20 wild, cardboard-bound tomes of authentic, regional Italian recipes. We chose to make 4 recipes, I grabbed my camera, and went around to our favorite shops to collect the absolute best ingredients. The unplanned result was a very personal film about friendship, history, and food that resonated on the festival circuit, winning over 20 awards including two Taste Awards for Best Film and Best Director. It generated a decent amount of money that got donated to Italian food banks as they were hit the hardest in the beginning of the pandemic. Celebrity chefs and epicurean royalty got behind the project and made it an ongoing success. Considering it was crafted by just one person on the fly, it’s a great example of what picking up a camera and running with it can produce, and the effect authentic content can have on the world at large.

If you want to get hungry and see the whole film, hop over to www.italyinbocca.com to explore the beautiful world of these books. For In Bocca Vol. 2, coming out this year, we took the books to Italy and cooked in a 500-year-old villa in Rome.

Writer / Director / Editor: Serrini