Mangia is a 20-25 minute personal narrative documentary about how food interweaves with and shapes our common human experiences throughout our entire lives.

I want to explore the history and complexities behind the food we eat and the food that we hold dear to our hearts – and why. Interviewing a variety of perspectives – from families at Third Street Alliance, local chefs or restaurant owners, and farmers.

Through these series of individual vignettes, I will carry the story along with my own personal connection to food: my Nonni. While unraveling the stories of others, I will center the film with my own personal story of old and new, life and death, and how the recipes we make guide us and accompany us through our happiest moments and our most devastating moments. This fall, my mom prepares to finally let go of her mother’s ashes and scatter them in Casco Bay with her father’s ashes. I want to explore my mom’s relationship with her mother, my Nonni, and their relationship of food together – as well as the process of grief and losing a parent. I plan to weave in these ‘storytelling’ sessions and cooking with my mother with these outside vignettes, shaping them all into a cohesive storytelling of life and death, and the influence of food throughout all stages of life.