Where most calories actually come from, and who decides.
A teenage girl in the South Korean mountains raises Okja, a genetically modified 'super pig'. When the Mirando Corporation claims Okja as winner of its global breeding contest, Mija follows her to New York, aided by the Animal Liberation Front. What unfolds is a tonally restless adventure that maps the infrastructure of industrial meat — from farm to lab to slaughterhouse — while holding fast to the physical, emotional reality of one human-animal bond.
Tampopo (1985), written and directed by Jūzō Itami, follows a widowed ramen-shop owner mentored by a trucker in her quest for culinary excellence. Framed as a 'noodle western', it interweaves this central story with vignettes exploring food, class, and desire across 1980s Tokyo. Shot on location with natural light by Masaki Tamura and edited by Akira Suzuki, it favours observation over exposition, craft over climax, and quiet resonance over narrative resolution.
Made in 2000, Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I is a self-reflexive French documentary shot on early digital video. Travelling across rural and suburban France, Varda observes people who glean—collecting leftover crops, discarded food, or abandoned objects—for reasons ranging from need to artistry. She includes chefs, lawyers, artists, and farmers, and inserts herself as both filmmaker and subject, filming her ageing hands, her grey hair, and even her lens cap swinging at her side. The film avoids thesis or resolution, favouring accumulation, texture, and quiet observation. It won the European Film Award for Best Documentary and has since been ranked among the greatest documentaries and 21st-century films by multiple critics’ polls.
Delicatessen (1991) is a French fantasy film set in a dilapidated Parisian apartment block where food is scarce and the ground-floor butcher doubles as landlord and killer. Unemployed clown Louison takes a job at the shop, falls for the butcher’s daughter Julie, and unwittingly becomes the object of both affection and appetite among the tenants. With production design that won a European Film Award and a visual style rooted in Brassaï’s monochrome grit, the film sustains a precise, tactile dystopia — one where resistance grows in sewers and romance blooms over shared chores. Directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, it is a debut of uncommon control and dark invention.
JBS S.A. is the world’s largest meat processor by sales. On May 30, 2021, ransomware disabled its beef and pork slaughterhouses in the US, Canada, and Australia. It paid $11 million in Bitcoin. The White House attributed the attack to a Russian organisation; news outlets named REvil. REvil did not claim responsibility before its infrastructure vanished on July 13, 2021.
E.Leclerc is a French retailers’ cooperative founded in 1948. It pioneered the hypermarket format in 1964, adopted self-service retailing from the Félix Potin model, launched wine fairs in 1973, discontinued disposable plastic bags in 1996, introduced the Repère brand in 1997, and expanded internationally starting with Pamplona in 1992 and most recently into Luxembourg in 2023 via acquisition.
Magnit is a Russian food retailer founded in 1994 in Krasnodar by Sergey Galitsky. It grew rapidly from a regional chain into a national leader, adopting the convenience store format in 2004 and expanding to 1,000 stores by 2000 and 1,500 by 2005—surpassing Pyaterochka in revenue. By 2010 it ranked among the world’s top 250 retailers (Deloitte), and in 2014 became Russia’s largest importer. Its growth continued with milestones including 10,000 stores (2015), entry into pharmacy and drogerie formats, and strategic acquisitions like Dixy (2021) and Samberi (2024). Ownership shifted significantly after 2018, with Marathon Group becoming the largest shareholder in November 2021. Management transitioned from Galitsky to external CEOs starting in 2018, and the company pursued vertical integration via in-house production facilities and distribution infrastructure.
Aldi is not a single company. It is two legally and financially separate firms — Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd — born from a 1960 split triggered by a disagreement over cigarettes. They share a name, a cost-cutting method, and a lineage, but no ownership, no shared board, and no central strategy. Their model works because it eliminates variables: no fresh produce, no advertising, no unsold stock, no large stores, no rebates beyond the legal 3%. By 1960, that method had scaled to 300 stores. Family control ended by 2002. The business survives not through narrative, but through subtraction.
