A selection of published articles on food and the people who cook, eat and serve.
(Click each headline to read the full story.)

The State of Hunger During COVID-19 in the U.S.
SELF Magazine, June 11, 2021
An estimated 45 million people, including 15 million children, were food insecure in 2020. “It’s unprecedented since we have been measuring it in the last 30 years,” says Lauren Bauer, Ph.D., a policy analyst at the Brookings Institution. In fact, in May 2020, Dr. Bauer documented new evidence from national surveys and prior USDA data that showed a steep increase in children going hungry just two months into the pandemic. The rise was quick, but the fall isn’t going to be quite as sharp: “This is going to be a long and slow climb down.”

Comfort Across Cultures at Durham’s Boricua Soul
Our State, Oct. 27, 2020
“This is the intimate relationship that has existed for centuries between the Caribbean and the American South,” says Von Diaz, a Puerto Rican-born, Georgia-raised cookbook author, journalist, and professor. “In that way, Boricua Soul isn’t doing anything revolutionary. They’re reclaiming the naturally existing intersections between their ancestral culinary cultures.”

‘We’re humans.’ NC’s Latino restaurants join forces to help workers - documented or not
Enlace Latino NC / News & Observer, March 27, 2020
As local restaurateurs rally to help small businesses in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, many Latino restaurant owners are focused on ways to maintain workers’ wages. Because for them, it’s personal.

Rural Youth Power
Crop Stories Zine, Spring 2018
In North Carolina tobacco and sweet potato fields, farmworkers face long hours and dangerous conditions. Their farmworker children are speaking out: “We’re young kids. There are hundreds of kids working out here trying to help their families. We got rights to talk about how we feel.”

The Restaurant Industry Depends on Immigrant Labor. What Happens If We Lose Them?
INDY Week, March 22, 2017
(2018 James Beard Media Awards Finalist - Local Impact)
A discomfort and negotiation are expressed in our history, with patterns of exploitation that we must confront. Labor and food are symbiotic. This essay explores those themes during a trip to Mexico, where I spent time with a former cook in North Carolina award-winning restaurants who returned home for fear of deportation.

Venerated Crook’s Corner Chef Bill Smith’s Legacy Will Endure Long After His Retirement
INDY Week’s Food & Drink Almanac, May 6, 2019
Smith walks the walk: He’s been outspoken about his views on immigration and sponsored three immigrant families from Mexico (when it was legally possible to do so). He’s also godfather to many of his Mexican staffers’ children, and Seasoned in the South’s dedication is a bilingual tribute to his chosen family in the “land of blood, meat, and fire.”

Back of the House: INDY's Dish Special Issue on the Stories Behind the Kitchen Door
INDY Week, Oct. 18, 2017
This eight-story special issue peeks into the personalities behind our most visited restaurants, with quirky discoveries and surprising kitchen rituals. I conceptualized the idea, assigned writers, edited the package, and wrote five stories.

Jessamyn Stanley Starts Her Morning With Yoga and Kendrick Lamar
Healthyish/Bon Appetit, March 12, 2018
In 2014, before she started popping up on your Instagram feed in fly Ivy Park athleisure and targeted Kotex ads, Jessamyn Stanley was a hostess at a tapas restaurant in downtown Durham, NC and taught yoga classes for restaurant workers looking to relieve their over-worked bodies. Her irreverent yoga tutorials on YouTube and Instagram have since garnered hundreds of thousands of followers. As a plus-sized, queer woman of color, she's captured the attention of a world that looks overwhelmingly different than her.

Exploring the Downside of Food Culture's Authenticity Obsession with Jose and Sons' Oscar Diaz
INDY Week, Aug. 17, 2016
"If someone else writes the history book about you, that's what is remembered. If we don't start controlling the narrative, someone else is. And then we become spectators of our own culture."

Inside Raleigh's North Person Street Neighborhood
Food & Wine / Travel + Leisure, Nov. 7, 2017
Raleigh’s North Person Street runs right past the iconic Krispy Kreme (if the “Hot Now” neon sign is gleaming, pull over immediately and devour a glazed doughnut fresh off the conveyor belt). Blocks from the downtown capitol, a less buttoned-up Raleigh is cultivating its entrepreneurial spirit led by an expanding creative class. (T+L commissioned me to choose a Raleigh neighborhood and write about a few favorite spots for its LOCAL FLAVOR series.)

The South's 38 Essential Restaurants
Eater, March 23, 2017
The dining rooms, shacks, stands, storefronts, and counters that define America’s most vibrant dining region. (I wrote about Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham and Chef and the Farmer in Kinston.)

What Do Lakewood Immigrant Residents Think of Their Neighborhood's Newest High-End Restaurant?
INDY Week, Aug. 30, 2017
(2018 James Beard Media Awards Finalist - Local Impact)
In Durham, food is an element of great pride, and the gateway drug for newcomers to experience a new South hallucination, free of complexities. [...] Still, when our world has gone to shit, a meal at a nice restaurant provides us with an escape, one we tell ourselves we deserve. But who is we? [...] As we sit at the table that Friday night, Mendoza cuts into his steak and surveys the room."White people stare too much," he says.

Famed Nigerian Chef Tunde Wey Stirs Up a Conversation About Race and Food That Was Already Simmering in Durham
INDY Week, Dec. 26, 2016
"I didn't want to be anybody's fantasy. My sort of reticence in speaking about the food is because there are so many opportunities when we're talking about race for people to get distracted. Either through humor or pedantic speech. I didn't want food to be the third thing."

Raleigh's Greek Legacy: Learn to cook and open a little restaurant
News & Observer, Nov. 28, 2015
Some of Raleigh’s longest-running restaurants started by Greek refugees fleeing war in the early 1900s. Their families have kept the traditions alive.

Lady Butchers Grab the Knife
Modern Farmer, Aug. 15, 2013
More than 30 percent of U.S. farmers tallied in the 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture were women. If farmers are increasingly female, the same seems to be happening for butchers, meat processors on the slaughter floor and chefs. In the South, many of these women are unabashedly entering a male-dominated industry to craft their own innovative, sustainable businesses.

Roots Torn Out by War and Replanted in Raleigh Bear “Jewels of Prosperity” for Arab-Americans
INDY Week, Oct. 26, 2016
For Fahd, fruit trees and herb gardens were a cathartic way to make sense of the world. He had slipped grafts of Lebanese pomegranate and fig trees, sprigs of mint attached to their roots, through the more lenient American airport security of the 1970s. Because he often worked landscape jobs for Raleigh's growing community of Arab-Americans, Fahd "would not ask," says Samir, to plant these three treasures in his friends' backyards. He just did it.

Pozole, a Mexican Stew of Devotion and Celebration, Simmers in Durham
INDY Week, Oct. 12, 2016
In the Ceja Bautistas' backyard, the evening air carries the aromas of church incense, teenage cologne, and simmering onions down a dirt path scattered with pine needles

Jukebox Hero
INDY Week, Feb. 6, 2013
Most of us have a soundtrack to our lives, a mental playlist we retrieve at the moments we find most celebratory or unbearable or just right. For much of my early childhood, mine came from a 1950s tabletop diner jukebox.

Greece's New Farmers
Huffington Post, Nov. 5, 2012
“Greece is only now discovering the power of civil society,” says young farmer Pavlos Georgiadis. “There has been cheap money for too many people. And our cities aren’t functional any more. There is obviously a new road for civil society and for farmers.”

Raspados: shave ice, syrup and a spoon
INDY Week, June 20, 2012
A neon-green truck beams with a looping script that reads "Raspados Elenita." The Spanish term raspados comes from raspar, meaning "to scrape." A Salvadoran woman in her 50s, Rosa Elena Ochoa, or Elenita, speaks limited English but greets everyone with a resplendent smile and a maternal care. "Aquí está, cariño. Here you are, dear," she says, handing four-year-old Juan Angel his treat topped with nance, a tiny, peach-like fruit from the tropical regions of Central America. "Nance, nance!" he screams, slurping up a spoonful.

Donia's Feast
INDY Week, Oct. 5, 2011
On my first visit to the Khalaf family's Iraqi-American home in Durham, Donia opens the door and apologizes. "The smell is so strong," she says. A stovetop gurgle emanates from the kitchen, the sound effect to the scent of garlic and tomato trailing toward the front door. Donia looks at me with a concerned smile, her kind, espresso-brown eyes seeming to ask for forgiveness. I tell her that it actually smells delicious in here, like a real home. Her smile broadens into a shy, pleased grin, swooping into two deep-set dimples, framed by freckles.

Against the grain: Bread Uprising's revolutionary spirit
INDY Week, Sept. 26, 2012
"We have always had a multiracial, multiclass, multiqueer (as we like to say) membership, and we were concerned by some inquiries that we had received from the 'foodie' scene in Durham, which is very white and class-privileged. We were concerned that our community could essentially be gentrified if we expanded without being intentional."

A selection of published news features.
(Click each headline to read the full story.)

A North Carolina Farmer Was Accused of Abusing His Workers. Then Big Tobacco Backed His Election.
Mother Jones, Oct. 7, 2022

In Reynolds American, Brent Jackson has not only found a buyer for his crop but also a generous source of funds for his political endeavors.

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Mother Jones and Enlace Latino NC reveals how Reynolds American has pumped a significant amount of money into Jackson’s campaign. In fact, few lawmakers in the Tar Heel state have received more money from the company than Jackson, who has in turn used his platform to promote bills that prevent his workers speaking out against abuse. Interviews with migrant workers employed on his farm reveal why they felt compelled to speak out. The union took its concerns about Jackson’s farm directly to Reynolds American, first in 2015 and again in 2019. But, despite senior executives’ claims that the company supports the freedom of farm workers in its supply chain to unionize, Reynolds continued to buy tobacco from Jackson’s farm and to help fund his political career.

Reporters: Ben Stockton, Victoria Bouloubasis
Photographer: Cornell Watson

CHICKEN COUNTRY: As N.C. poultry plants failed to curb COVID-19, Latina workers stood in the gap

Living Downstream podcast + Southerly, Enlace Latino NC
July 9, 2021
With little to no protection from their employers or the state during the pandemic, a mother-daughter community health worker duo has helped launch and lead vaccination events in Duplin County, N.C.

This story is a multimedia piece, which includes as a podcast episode on Living Downstream. The mother and daughter lead the story in Spanish, without overdubbing. The partners who made this story possible include Northern California Public Media, Mensch Media, Southerly, and Enlace Latino NC. Additional support provided by National Geographic COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists and Solutions Journalism Network.

Farm cooperatives allow Latinos to grow and sell food on their own terms
Southerly + Enlace Latino NC, June 22, 2021

In an industry benefiting white farmers, Tierra Fértil roots a growing Latino community in Henderson County, N.C.

IGNORED AND FORGOTTEN
Each hurricane season, eastern North Carolina braces for the worst. But emergency planning, response and recovery efforts neglect a major marginalized population: rural Latinos. A bilingual series for Enlace Latino NC with support from the Investigative Editing Corps and funding by NC Local News Lab.

Before the Storm: Without emergency alerts in Spanish, Latino immigrants in rural N.C. are left out of local emergency preparedness
Enlace Latino NC, Sept 19, 2020
Without emergency alerts in their language or recovery support specific to community needs, immigrant workers and families navigate an emergency management system that fails to include them, putting their jobs and livelihoods on the line to survive a disaster and its aftermath.

Farmworkers left behind by broken labor and disaster aid systems
Enlace Latino NC/Southerly, Dec. 2, 2020
A hurricane season on top of a pandemic showed how farmworkers in North Carolina are susceptible to dangerous conditions on the job. Labor laws exclude most agricultural workers from historic worker protections, and policy reform to better protect workers remains stagnant.

Road to Recovery: After two years of systemic challenges, an immigrant family rebuilt their home destroyed by Hurricane Florence
Enlace Latino NC, Dec. 15, 2020
Natural disasters have unveiled tremendous inequities affecting how undocumented immigrants receive aid for disaster preparedness and recovery.

Heroes of the pandemic: “When the world is burning, I must put out the fire”
Univision/Enlace Latino NC, Sept. 24, 2020
At the peak of the pandemic, nearly half of positive Covid-19 cases in North Carolina were among Latinos, despite just being 9.6% of the population. In the absence of adequate state or federal support, a group of Latina doctors and activists is taking the community’s health into their own hands. This multimedia piece was produced as a collaboration with visual journalist Andrea Patiño Contreras.

Little Heart of Gold
Enlace Latino NC, June 12, 2020
The first N.C. child to die of COVID-19 is an eight-year-old with Mexican parents. Her death puts a spotlight on a crisis that state officials can no longer ignore: coronavirus is rapidly spreading through Latino communities. Latinos make up 43% of cases in N.C., but less than 10% of total population.

A small part of this story was featured as an obituary for young Yoshi on NPR’s Global Lives Lost, remembering people who have died during the pandemic.

As COVID-19 races through Mountaire Farms poultry plant, workers deemed vital feel dispensable
NC Health News / Enlace Latino NC, May 28, 2020
"I sometimes want to defend my people, but then I’ll get myself into trouble.” Workers at Mountaire Farms in Siler City say they are working elbow-to-elbow with double the product, processing 36 chickens per minute, at $11.40/hr. They say they get yelled at if they ask for a break, hearing "this is what we pay you for." A housekeeper was fired when she asked for paid time off after her husband tested positive for COVID-19.

Latinos, the coronavirus and a single zip code
NC Health News / Enlace Latino NC, May 29, 2020
Latinos comprise 35% of NC’s 24,140 confirmed COVID-19 cases but make up only 9.6% of the state’s pop. Siler City is in the zip code with the fastest growing rate of the virus; the town is 43% Latino and where ‘polleras,’ or poultry plants, have had a looming presence over working-class communities since the 1980s. State health officials still refuse to reveal how many workers are infected at Mountaire Farms and other poultry plants.

‘They didn’t tell us anything’: North Carolina poultry plant workers say Butterball isn’t protecting them from COVID-19
Southerly / Enlace Latino NC, May 1, 2020
As the virus spreads through meatpacking plants across the U.S., immigrant communities struggle to get answers from the company or state health officials about cases at a Mount Olive facility. “They just want us to work and they don’t see we exist in the same community.”

Coronavirus poses a threat to a major NC food producer: the immigrant farmworker
Enlace Latino NC / News & Observer, March 30, 2020
“Industry concerns are put above health concerns and above the lives of migrant workers. That’s worrisome because, at the end of the day, [the workers] are sustaining the food industry without any protection for themselves.”

Campus housing takes on new meaning as US considers more caps on refugee resettlement
PRI’s Global Nation, Sept. 9, 2019
On a global level, the number of people seeking refuge and asylum is at 70.8 million — an all-time high — according to the UN Refugee Agency. But a mere 7% of those seeking refuge have been resettled. While the statistics leave advocates fraught with frustration, Every Campus as a Refuge based in North Carolina sees the current crisis as an opportunity.

Months After Hurricane Florence, Undocumented Farmworkers Still Struggle to Recover
Civil Eats, Nov. 13, 2018
In North Carolina, immigrant farmworkers, a backbone of the state’s ag sector, have been hard hit by lack of access to assistance due to deportation fears.

The Hunted: Pedro Salmeron Was Deported From North Carolina in 2016. We Went to El Salvador to See What His Life’s Like Now.
INDY Week, Feb. 28, 2018
Each year, at least 20,000 migrants vanish and presumably die on the journey to the United States. Pedro Salmeron was among those who made it, fleeing gang violence in El Salvador to join his parents in North Carolina. But just three years later, the teenager was deported back to one of the most violent countries in the world. (Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation.)

Salvadoran Women Imprisoned for Abortion Speak Out Against Their Country's Draconian Laws
Jezebel, May 2, 2018
A stillbirth, miscarriage, or loss of the fetus is still considered an abortion under Salvadoran federal law. The maximum sentence for an abortion conviction is 12 years in prison, but many women face a charge of aggravated homicide, which carries a sentence that ranges from 30 to 40 years. “In jail, the other women would say, ‘You killed your baby.’ You are treated like a dog.” (Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation.)

Home of the Brave: A Teen's Detention Sparked a Community Into Action, But He’s Still Not Free 
INDY Week, March 22, 2017
Wildin Acosta's deportation case sparked urgency in this progressive community he'd called home for three years, marked by confusion about how a teenager who fit so neatly into the American obsession with meritocracy would be treated like a delinquent.

#Caravana 43 in North Carolina: How the Ayotzinapa case is sparking a movement in the South
Guernica Magazine, May 27, 2015
Mexican immigrants swim in limbo between two countries, in a sea of parallels. They are tired of the politics entangling the lives of the most vulnerable on both sides of the border. These voices are indicative of a changing South and a civil rights movement not yet laid to rest.
(Text & audio by Victoria Bouloubasis. Video & editing by Andrea Patiño Contreras. Original version debuted as a series of Instagram essays.)

Dead or imprisoned for having an abortion: fighting El Salvador's brutal laws (video)
The Guardian, Oct. 25, 2017
El Salvador is on the brink of change as citizens and policy makers challenge the draconian abortion law. (Monica Wise and I shot this footage for The Guardian while on our IWMF reporting fellowship.)

Lost and Found: A Safe Space for the Triangle’s Growing Transgender Latina Population
INDY Week, Sept. 21, 2016
For uninsured immigrants, the majority of whom lack legal status, a medical transition hasn't always been so simple—or safe. Medical care for transgender immigrants is a recent phenomenon in the South.

Slave Wages: The Durham Jail Classifies Inmate Kitchen Workers as Volunteers
INDY Week, Sept. 14, 2016
Unlike in state prisons, where the average inmate's daily wage hovers around $4.73, the workers in the county jail do not manufacture any material goods and don't receive any remuneration. 

Twelve-year-old tobacco farmers: the hidden battle against US child labor
The Guardian, May 15, 2014
Brazil and India have banned child labor in their tobacco fields, but the Human Rights Watch reports that children as young as 12 are doing dangerous work in American fields.

Be Our Guest Worker
The American Prospect, Nov. 7, 2013
A look at the uncertain existence of the legal migrant farmworkers that the agricultural industry relies on for cheap labor.

Growing Home
INDY Week, May 16, 2012
3rd place Multimedia Award - 2012 Association of Food Journalists
Karen refugees rebuild their lives on a farm in North Carolina, while simultaneously learning how to hold an American hamburger.
(Text by Victoria Bouloubasis. Photos by D.L. Anderson.)

New Starts 
INDY Week, Oct. 30, 2013
"There's a twinge in your gut saying, 'I'm still not worthy.' The only way to survive [in prison] is to shut your emotions off. You come home and you're dead inside." Benevolence Farm is connecting female ex-convicts with the land. 

Report details plight of North Carolina's tobacco workers
INDY Week, Nov. 9, 2011
A stagnant breeze on a humid July evening in Wilson County nudges plush rows of tobacco leaves. Farmworkers who squat and bend to pick those leaves in the peak of summer heat sit wearily on makeshift stoops. They live in units made of concrete and covered in peeling paint. From afar, these homes can be mistaken for animal stables.

Who's picking your food?
INDY Week, March 28, 2012
Photo exhibit shows a hidden labor force: N.C.'s child farmworkers.

An Oasis in a Food Desert
INDY Week, May 19, 2010
That communities like East Durham exist in what researchers have dubbed "food deserts" is nothing new. What is new is that researchers and policymakers are beginning to connect these food deserts with the pervasive problems of hunger and obesity that afflict the poor.

(Click each title to watch the films.)

MAKING WAVES (2022)
2023 River Run Film Festival
2022 New Orleans Film Festival
2022 NC Latin American Film Festival

In 2011, Areli and Leon moved to Durham and started a coffee business out of a bike cart. Now they have three thriving shops and a roastery, winning national recognition as 2022 Microroaster of the Year. Areli’s roots in Mexico and Leon’s love of history and spices culminate as Cocoa Cinnamon and Little Waves Coffee Roasters, gems at the heart of our Durham community. Proud to share their story in partnership with VisitNC .

Directed by Victoria Bouloubasis + Pilar Timpane
Art Director | Lauren Vied Allen
DP | Pilar Timpane
Additional Camera | Sara Riazati, Victoria Bouloubasis, Ana Hoppert Flores, Lauren Vied Allen
Production Assistant | Ana Hoppert Flores
Music | Treee City
Sound Recordist | Piper Kessler
Audio Mixer | Jonathan Henderson
Writer | Victoria Bouloubasis
Editor | Pilar Timpane
Title design | Shanthony Exum
DJ party by Mamis & the Papis
Muses | Areli Barrera Grodski, Leon Grodski Barrera, Cocoa Cinnamon, Little Waves Coffee Roasters

RISING UP IN THE HEARTLAND (2022)
2023 Emmy Nominee, Oustanding Spanish Language Feature
2022 ONA Award Winner

COVID-19 hammered essential workers across the United States. After long struggles to regain their health, marginalized and undocumented Latino workers in rural Iowa took on a bold new challenge this year: demanding a share of the pandemic relief funds that have excluded them.

First, they fought for their lives. Now they are fighting for their livelihoods.

Direction + Production | Federica Narancio, Victoria Bouloubasis, Anna Clare Spelman

A Univision Noticias production with support from HHMI Department of Science Education

NIÑAS / SOMOS EL FUEGO (2021)
2022 Premio Gabo Award Winner

In one of Guatemala’s deadliest tragedies since the end of its civil war, a 2017 fire in a state-run youth shelter killed 41 teenage girls and left 15 seriously wounded. Years later, the remaining young survivors and the victims’ families grapple with injustice, government negligence, and life as teenagers, unveiling how gendered violence, corruption and impunity pervade Latin America.

Directors | Monica Wise Robles & Victoria Bouloubasis
DP | Monica Wise Robles
Producers | Lu Reinoso Flores, Monica Wise Robles, Victoria Bouloubasis

Reporting was made possible with support from the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) as part of its Adelante Latin America fellowship. This nonfiction film is part of the transmedia journalism project “No fue el fuego” (“It was not the fire”) by Agencia Ocote.

HEROES OF THE PANDEMIC (2020)
2021 Edward Murrow Award Winner
2021 Webby Award Winner - Longform Documentary
2021 Webby Award Winner - People’s Voice

At the peak of the pandemic, nearly half of positive Covid-19 cases in North Carolina were among Latinos, despite just being 9.6% of the population. In the absence of adequate state or federal support, a group of Latina doctors and activists is taking the community’s health into their own hands.

Production | Andrea Patiño Contreras & Victoria Bouloubasis
Camera | Andrea Patiño Contreras & Casey Toth
Editing | Andrea Patiño Contreras

Published as a partnership of Univision Digital and Enlace Latino NC. This project was supported by the Center for Documentary Studies and Duke Office of Durham and Community Affairs at Duke University.

”THIS IS REAL” (2020)
A Latino family fights for their right to medical care while battling COVID-19.

Production | Andrea Patiño Contreras & Victoria Bouloubasis
Animation | Raul Avila

Published as a partnership of Univision Digital and Enlace Latino NC. This project was supported by the Center for Documentary Studies and Duke Office of Durham and Community Affairs at Duke University.

THE LAST PARTERA (IN PRODUCTION)
2017 Big Sky Pitch Competition

In rural Costa Rica, a 95-year-old midwife passes on the wisdom of her craft to a new generation of women fighting for their right to choose how they give birth.

Directors | Victoria Bouloubasis & Ned Phillips
DP | Ned Phillips
Producers | Pilar Timpane, Victoria Bouloubasis

UN BUEN CARNICERO (2014)
2023 Cine Casual Film Series
2022 NCMA Latin American Film Series
2016 Indie Grits Film Festival
2015 PBS Online Film Festival
2015 NC Latin American Film Festival

A good butcher listens. When customers at Cliff's Meat Market in Carrboro, North Carolina began asking for cuts in Spanish, owner Cliff Collins started looking for help. For nearly 18 years Tolo Martinez has worked behind Cliff's counter, learning "country" English and giving college professors, blue-collar workers and long-time patrons exactly what they want—and always with a smile. Un Buen Carnicero (A Good Butcher) goes behind the courtesies of the butcher's counter on the eve of Independence Day to explore the complex realities of immigrant life while celebrating America's freedom and questioning its convenience.
14 min. - Spanish & English with subtitles

Director | Victoria Bouloubasis
DP, Editor, Color | D.L. Anderson
Producer, B Camera | Mikel Barton
Original Score | Ari Picker
Audio Prod. | Ben Turney, York Wilson
Mix & Dialog Editor | Mike Westbrook
Music | Groupo Kual?, Los Amparito

This film was underwritten by the Southern Foodways Alliance and their Greenhouse Films project.

LA COMIDA DE LOS COCINEROS / LINE COOKS AT HOME (2016)
2016 First Place Multimedia Award - Association of Food Journalists
2016 #RightToWork Panel & Screening
2017 Food Media South
2017 Indie Grits Film Festival
2017 PBS Reel South Short Film Award

Before leaving Mexico for North Carolina, Oscar didn’t know how to flip a tortilla on the grill. Now, under the direction of a James Beard award-winning chef, he and fellow cooks Javier, Romeo and Ramiro run the line at the high-end Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill. The cocineros have adapted to life in a new country by leaning on each other in the kitchen—both at work and at home. Their big Sunday family meal reveals food traditions old and new. 
6 min. - Spanish with English subtitles 

Direction, Production & Script | Victoria Bouloubasis
Direction, Film & Editing | Andrea Patiño Contreras

Produced for Feet in 2 Worlds; also part of my UNC master's thesis work.