Though he’s been writing since he was a teen on Skins, Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Black Panther) is just now stepping behind the camera. He’s the co-director of the upcoming dystopian film The Kitchen, which he co-wrote with Joe Murtagh, and co-directed with Kibwe Tavares.
Netflix offers only a very short synopsis of the film: “A story of fatherhood and love for the community… Every city has a Kitchen. In a dystopian London, the gap between rich and poor has been stretched to its limits.”
And this trailer doesn’t give much more. Against a backdrop of cops, bike gangs (both motor and pedal-powered), and violence, Izi (Kane Robinson) looks for a way out of the Kitchen—until he encounters Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), a boy who needs a family. This London is full of neon and riot cops, pristine lobbies and grubby alleys, hierarchies and have-nots. Izi and Benji clearly need each other, but it doesn’t seem like the world has anything good in store for them.
The Kitchen premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October; Variety reviewed it then, saying, “Even at its shakiest, however, The Kitchen gets by on the steam of its own fury, and on its tender depiction of a trampled underclass staving off defeat through small, everyday acts of care and empathy.”
Along with Robinson (Top Boy) and newcomer Bannerman, the film stars Hope Ikpoku Jnr, BackRoad Gee, Cristale, Teija Kabs, Demmy Ladipo, and Ian Wright. Enter The Kitchen on Netflix on January 19th.
