Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

In an extraordinary soup kitchen in Milan, two vastly different worlds have been brought together by a unique social experiment. Theater of Life captures the remarkable relationship forged between the finest haute cuisine chefs in the world and the city’s most disadvantaged groups: refugees, recovering drug addicts, former sex workers, and a host of others with no place else to go.
For Expo Milano 2015, renowned chef Massimo Bottura, whose Osteria Francescana was named world’s best restaurant in 2016, invited 60 of his international confrères to join him in transforming food destined for the dumpster into delicious and nutritious meals for Italy’s hungriest residents. But the documentary delves far deeper than this important food story: it captures the moving encounters of guests at the soup kitchen who have found a welcoming community there, showing us glimpses of their heart and soul in the process.

A visual feast in itself, Theater of Life puts a human face on its powerful message of social justice while raising awareness about the enormous environmental impact of food waste.