taCity

As an urban geography professor, there are some films that are so on the nose with regard the themes that pervade my teaching and research encounters that they demand a closer inspection: and Netflix’s The Kitchen by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya is one such film.

Set in a near future (2044), it is eerily reminiscent of the present of capitalist realism; and we are introduced into an inner city London ghetto called ‘The Kitchen’ (although the building used is actually Damiers d’Anjou in Paris). An enclave of mainly Black London residents, the film introduces a series of residents and narrates their various struggles and political beliefs about life in the Kitchen. Against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood, the film is a stark portrayal of the displacement and marginalization experienced by many inner-city dwellers of London (and further afield) today, particularly the Black community.

The focus is on Izi (played the grime artist Kano) and a young teenager Benji (superbly portrayed by Jedaiah Bannerman). Izi is a funeral home salesman, struggling to make enough money to leave the Kitchen for a new life in a bland, gentrified, yuppified urban ‘village’. At the funeral of Benji’s mother, Izi meets Benji and an awkward friendship is formed. Benji joins a crew of residents who rob food trucks so as to feed the people of the Kitchen, but otherwise life joyful, caring and community-nurturing lives.

As the story unfolds, the relationship between Izi and Benji takes centre stage, but all the protagonists have to navigate a landscape fraught with systemic oppression, where the promise of urban renewal often comes at the expense of the marginalized.

Central to the film’s exploration of gentrification is its portrayal of social housing architecture. Cramped, decrepit, where the water and lights cut out frequently, the enclave is deliberately shown as a joyous space with a vibrant futuristic street culture and vivid neon roller discos at night.

But surrounding the modernist block are the construction of sleek, modern developments all too familiar in London. Robin Hood Gardens – a place I have written about and visited extensively – plays a role in the film, and if you’ve visited recently, it is nearing the end of its life, surrounded by the homogenous yuppiedromes of ‘Blackwall Reach’.

The Kitchen visually and narratively interrogates the implications of such transformations on the lives of those who call these spaces home, and the sensitivity the filmmakers have to the intricacies of social housing and neoliberal architecture is obvious throughout.

Where The Kitchen also excels in portraying capitalist realism is with the issue of police brutality with unflinching honesty. Drawing parallels to real-world incidents with many of the residents proclaiming ‘I can’t breathe’ when being manhandled by the faceless, brutalising police occupiers, the film exposes the brutal realities of racial profiling and excessive use of force within these inner city ‘sink’ estates.

The film’s is therefore a powerful narrative and exploration of Blackness in inner-city London. Through an authentic storytelling that echoes the cinematographic and narrative tenacity of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, The Kitchen celebrates the resilience and diversity of Black communities while also acknowledging the complexities of identity and familial belonging.

The film also has a wonderful extended cameo from Ian Wright (yes, him) who plays the pirate radio DJ for The Kitchen. During one of the many police raids, he exclaims “”They can only stop ‘we’, if they see ‘we’ as ‘I’”. It is an extremely poignant and poetic microcosm of how in the midst of a gentrifying urban violence, social cohesion and community can thrive.