For his debut behind the camera, Daniel Kaluuya films a dystopian fable with one of the stars of “Top Boy”.
What is it about ?
Against a backdrop of growing injustice and gentrification, a young boy finds his place in the last place left for London’s most disadvantaged residents.
The Kitchen, a film written by Daniel Kaluuya and Joe Murtagh, directed by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya with Kane Robinson, Jedaiah Bannerman, Hope Ikpoku Jr…
A Black Mirror-style atmosphere
In a dystopian London where the gap between rich and poor has been pushed to the extreme, social housing has simply been eradicated. But a small community, called “The Kitchen”, refuses to leave the area it occupies. It is nothing more and nothing less than a rundown area of tangled former social housing whose proud residents live in poverty under incessant government surveillance – and raids.
With The Kitchen, for his first time behind the camera, Daniel Kaluuya, actor revealed by Get Out then Black Panther, tackles a social fable which, with its dystopian universe, takes on the contours of Black Mirror. A universe to which he is no stranger since he himself played in the Charlie Brooker series, in episode 2 of season 2, “Fifteen Million Merits”.
He chooses a futuristic London, but not so distant, since the action takes place during the 2040s. There are gleaming apartment buildings which offer a life of isolation, totally sanitized, to those who can afford it. Those who can’t have “The Kitchen”.
Izi (Top Boy’s Kane Robinson) has had enough of police raids and water shortages. He set his sights on a one-bedroom apartment in the upscale Buena Vida neighborhood. Just when he thinks he’s (almost) out of The Kitchen, something is holding him back: young Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), the child of a former girlfriend who, having lost his mother, risks being dragged into the violent insurrection that town resident Staples (Hope Ikpoku Jr.) leads against the authorities.
Netflix
It’s a bit of his personal journey that Daniel Kaluuya tells in this film, with the added dystopian element. He grew up in Camden in the Kentish Town district, with his Ugandan mother, who works in a special school, and his older sister. He remained at his property for many years, even after achieving success. He had his own little apartment, and he would go off to do theater, sometimes for months, and then come back.
But after a while, he realized that it no longer worked. His friends told him that he shouldn’t stay, that things had changed and that people were leaving, that others were coming to settle down. Little by little, he realized that he too had to leave. In his film, Izi is also caught between two fires: the desire to leave (to “leave this shithole” as he says) and the desire to stay, despite everything…
The Kitchen is currently available on Netflix