“Cooking with Stories” at the Arquiteturas Film Festival in Porto​​​​​​​​, Portugal

“Cooking with Stories” by Mayar El-Bakry, Maya Ober, and Romi Lee explores the tales, traditions, and rituals behind anonymously designed cooking tools. Following the preparation of dishes from the South West Asian and North African (SWANA) region, the experimental visual document highlights various “protagonist” objects, each telling a different story. As we delve into these fragments of everyday home cooking, the voices and rich diasporic narratives of people from the SWANA region—who are now immigrants in many countries throughout Europe—unfold and offer the view of a rich cultural landscape, instead of the binaries that often prevail in both design and cooking.​​​​​​​​From September 27 to October 1, 2022, the movie was featured at the Arquiteturas Film Festival in Porto, Portugal. The 9th edition of the festival focused on socially and environmentally just spatial practices.