Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya dives into dystopia as co-director and co-producer of The Kitchen. The film is set in 2044, when the gap between the rich and the poor has widened to dangerous extremes. Living in temporary housing on the outskirts of London, in a community called The Kitchen, Izi (Kane “Kano” Robinson, Top Boy) and Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) form an unlikely bond as they struggle to survive. With Izi desperate to find a way out of the area and Benji seeking a place to call home after losing his mother, the pair forge a family of their own as they struggle to defy a system stacked against them. 

“In 2011, I was in my barbershop and there was a guy boasting about doing million-pound heists in a minute, getting paid £200 to do it,” says Kaluuya, who also co-wrote the film with Joe Murtagh (American Animals, Gangs of London). “I saw the potential to unlock a unique story door to the inequality, fatherhood, class, joy, resilience, courage, care, and defiance [that embody] London.” 

Kaluuya devised the idea for The Kitchen with collaborators Daniel Emmerson and Kibwe Tavares, who makes his feature debut as co-director. “The Kitchen is very much a love letter to London, the city that has defined my childhood and identity,” says Tavares. “Through Benji, a 12-year-old in need of care, we explore what we as society lose in the ever-changing and shifting patterns of life and our cities. I’m incredibly honored to be able to explore a father-son relationship in this setting that is as personal as it is universal. This is a film for my father and all the fathers and sons out there, who are working it out. And to all the communities out there that are trying to take care of each other.”