Washington DC International Film Festival: Food Centric Movies

I love movies. I love movies with subtitles. I love food. I love movies about food. What's not to love?

That's exactly why I said yes to a media lunch invitation to learn about 28th Annual Filmfest DC, or Washington DC International Film Festival. For the first time, this year's festival has a special category for food centric films called Feast Your Eyes.

I've already made my selections and can't wait to see the following films from Fest Your Eyes category:

Love and Lemons (Sweden) A romantic comedy about love, friendship and the courage to follow your dreams

Le Chef (France) Pokes fun at the restaurant world while dishing up easily digestible laughs

Romantic Brasserie (Belgium) Pascaline runs a stylish brasserie and on Valentine's Day her old flame from 20 years ago suddenly reappears and asks her to run away with him

If you aren't particularly interested in the subject of food...wait, people like that would not be reading my blog!!!

Other categories in the Filmfest DC include Trust No One: Espionage and Thrillers, The Lighter Side and Justice Matters. Regardless of your interest, I'm sure you'll find several films among over 80 features, documentaries, comedies, shorts, and award winners presented at the festival.

I encourage you to visit the festival website and choose a few films based on your interest or even location and date. Whatever works for you is fine.

Over the weekend I had a privilege/luck to see a preview of Eden.

"Eden is the beguiling story of the unusual friendship between corpulent, committed chef Gregor (Josef Ostendorf) and waitress Eden (German TV star Charlotte Roche), who's stuck in a rut with dance instructor husband Xaver (Devid Striesow) and daughter Leonie (Leonie Stepp), who has Down syndrome. Gregor makes Leonie a chocolate birthday cake, and with one taste Eden is in thrall with his culinary charisma. At first, such cucina erotica as bulls' testicles and chocolate cola sauce stimulate her home life with Xaver, but, when Eden announces she's pregnant, her husband fears the worst."—Eddie Cockrell

The movie made me laugh, cry, and touched upon almost every single human emotion including anger, envy, happiness, desire, and despair. Not surprisingly, Eden demonstrated how food can inspire love and also be used as a way to show love. You'll have to go see the movie for yourself to see what happens.

DO NOT miss this festival because it may be the last one! I'm not exaggerating: due to budget issues, this may be the last Washington DC International Festival!

Filmfest DC runs April 17 through 27. For more information check out the festival website.

Disclosure: I was invited to lunch to learn about this film festival and will receive a few passes to see the films. All opinions are my own.