Culinary Zinema, the section combining film and gastronomy, turns six this year. Created in collaboration with the Berlin Festival and organised jointly with the Basque Culinary Center, this edition it brings seven competing films, all documentaries except one. Cuisine from Turkey, Argentina and Baja California; Japanese markets, family cookbooks from Taiwan, insects and food waste as a culinary basis make up the menu of the Festival’s 64th edition.

The section opens with Theater of Life, looking at the experience of the Refettorio Ambrosiano, the soup kitchen run at Milan’s 2015 World’s Fair by Massimo Bottura -also the leading figure last year of one of the documentaries in Culinary Zinema, Chef's Table "Massimo Bottura"- where more than 40 of the world’s most famous chefs prepared meals using nothing but the wastage of the event’s pavilions. The Canadian filmmaker Peter Svatek, who has delved with his films into subjects as widely ranging as mixed martial arts or the stolen children of Argentina, signs this work.

Filmmaking twosome Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, whose latest work, El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen) will compete for the Golden Lion in Venice, will precisely explore in Todo sobre el asado the subject promised in its title, translating as ‘everything about grilling’: a voyage to a kind of food and a ritual that portrays an essential part of Argentinian identity. To narrate the story, Cohn and Duprat have adopted a point of view alternating between witticism and irreverence.

In Bugs we take a look at the future of food, at least from the perspective of René Redzepi’s Nordic Food Lab. In this Danish production, selected for festivals including Tribeca and Edinburgh, Andreas Johnsen follows two chefs from the experimental laboratory as they investigate the insects eaten round the world.

Baja Taste also connects to posterity, although somewhat closer. This documentary, directed by the Mexican filmmaker Roberto Nájera, turns the spotlight on the new Mexican cuisine coming out of Baja California, analysing the gastronomic phenomenon through four chefs.

Mitsuhito Shirada’s third movie, Mama, gohan mada? / What’s for Dinner, Mom?, is based on the novel by the writer and actress Tae Hitoto, in which a woman starts reconstructing the life of her mother, who emigrated from Japan to Taiwan, on discovering a box of letters and recipes in the old family home.

Luis González, co-director of Cooking up a Tribute, selected last year for Culinary Zinema, looks in The Turkish Way at how the Roca brothers set about learning the basics of Turkish cuisine, one of the least known, vigorous and oldest gastronomies on the planet.

The closing film will transfer the audience to the biggest fish and seafood market in the world. Naotaro Endo, author of the award-winning independent film Guzen no tsutsuki, directs Tsukiji Wonderland, a documentary about Tsukiji Market, standing in the centre of Tokyo for the last 80 years. Fish and seafood from this market are the ingredients used for traditional Japanese cuisine going by the name of ‘washoku’.

Rounding off the cinematic experience, as in other years, are dinners related to the content of the films screened. A team of teacher-chefs of Basque Culinary Center who took part in Refettorio Ambrosiano will prepare the opening gala dinner. Joxean Eizmendi, from the Asador Illara, will work with the Todo sobre el asado film crew; and Turkish chef Mehmet Gürs will throw a banquet based on his country’s traditional products. Cheung Yat Sing, head of the Michelin-star Tim Ho Wan restaurant chain in Hong Kong, will work with the chef at the Ni Neu, Mikel Gallo, to prepare a menu following the family recipes of Taiwan as seen in Mama, Gohan Mada? / What's for Dinner, Mom? The restauranteur living in Tijuana, Javier Plascencia, will devise the menu linked to Baja Taste; the Sardinian chef Roberto Flore, now at the head of the Nordic Food Lab, will create a dinner taking its inspiration from Bugs; and, lastly, the closing gala dinner by Ricardo Sanz, creator of the so-called Kabuki cuisine, will focus on the Japanese-Mediterranean cookbook. With the exception of the dinners served at the Illara and in the ni neu, all other meals will be hosted by the Basque Culinary Center.

The combined screening-dinner tickets can be purchased from September 5th at a price of €70 euros from the Festival and Kutxabank websites. Tickets for the screenings alone will go on sale on September 11th and will cost €7.20.

Culinary Zinema has Nespresso as the section Sponsor. The Pictures dept. co. ltd. distribution company, which also chiefly focusses on the film & food fusion, is a collaborator of the section. A jury chosen by Pictures dept. co. ltd., will present one of the films programmed in the Culinary Zinema section with the Tokyo Gohan Award and its €10,000, going to the international distributor of the film, or failing this, to its producer.