“Breaking Bread” opens with a quote from Anthony Bourdain, who said that “food may not be the answer to world peace, but it’s a start.” The premise of this documentary, directed by Beth Elise Hawk, is that all cultures can unite in the spectacle of delicious food on camera.
The film follows preparations for the 2017 A-Sham Festival in Haifa, Israel, an event that celebrates the cuisine of a region where geopolitical boundaries are more defined than culinary. At the beginning of the film, the festival’s founder, Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, herself as a Muslim, an Arab, an Israeli, a Palestinian, a woman, a scientist and a cook (she won the Israeli version of “MasterChef” a few years ago). She says in the film that borders “mean nothing to hummus.”
The participants live in Israel, but have different backgrounds. At the festival, they are generally paired with someone whose ancestry is different from their own to create an assigned dish. For example, Ali Khattib, from an Alawite village in the Golan Heights, and Shlomi Meir, who runs an Eastern European restaurant in Haifa, team up to make a traditional Syrian soup based on yogurt-soaked bulgur.
Many of the observations in “Breaking Bread” — the repeatedly presented notions that food is a common language or that politics has no place in the kitchen — seem trite and perhaps overly optimistic. Ideally, the film is shown with an accompanying tasting menu.
breaking bread
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.
