Focaccia Blues is a Movie directed by Nico Cirasola and produced by Alessandro Contessa. It tells the true fairytale story about the focaccia who ate the hamburger. This film is based on the true story of what happened a few years ago in Altamura, a town of 65,000 souls in the province of Bari, where McDonald's, the world's largest fast-food franchise ,opened a huge restaurant to great success ... at the beginning. But, two local bakers, very proud of their own region's foods, produce and traditions, were clearly not enamored with the novelty of their new neighbor. Against all odds, they opened a bakery, ten times smaller than their competition, just yards away. Month by month, the bakers saw their own clientele growing larger and larger. Then the unexpected happened: in only eighteen months, with creativity and a lot of work, they managed to put the fast food restaurant out of business. It was the first time that this ever happened - a modern day David and Goliath story - and it made news. It was first reported by the Paris newspaper Liberation, and then by the New York Times and other newspapers and magazines around the world. A documentary and then a film followed. So, how did they do that ... those two courageous and industrious souls in Bari? With the confidence that a homemade focaccia simply tastes better than a mass-produced bun, they started to prepare focacce imbottite - a thick focaccia, cut in half and filled with all sorts of local produce: ham, sausages, cheese and vegetables. Their customers quickly discovered that their local bakery's lunches were definitively more satisfying than the fast food next door. As the New York Times concludes at the end of their article, the fast food restaurant wasn't beaten by a baker; it was beaten by a culture. |
