Food for the Soul is an enjoyable watch, warm and occasionally funny without ever making light of the cultural tensions at its center. Screened at MVAAFF, Chisom Chieke’s 18-minute short follows Ada (Karen Obilom), a Nigerian-American artist and medical school dropout, and Trey (Marcus Scribner), her Black-American fiancé and game creator, as their relationship brings two families, and two sets of expectations, into the same room.
What makes the film work is how naturally it explores the differences between Black American and African cultures without treating either as a monolith. I’ve never personally been in a serious relationship with someone from a different community, but watching that friction play out here felt recognizable in the way cultural differences can exist even between people who, from the outside, might be seen as having so much in common. There is an immediate familiarity, but underneath it are completely different traditions, expectations and ideas about what a life should look like.
Setting Trey in Atlanta is a particularly smart choice. Cities like DC, Chicago and New York are often described as Black cultural meccas, but Atlanta has a shorthand quality to it; its identity as a center of Black American culture is almost understood without explanation. That makes the distinction between Trey and Ada’s backgrounds feel even more specific.
The clearest expression of that difference comes through food. Trey arrives with ribs from a soul food spot and, essentially, announces that he has brought soul food. Ada is making jollof rice, and her father responds by asking, “What’s wrong with jollof rice?” before turning the idea back on him: isn’t that food for the soul too?
It’s a simple exchange, but it captures the film’s central idea beautifully. Two cultures can be placed under the broad category of Blackness and still have completely different relationships to food, family and tradition. The title suddenly carries a second meaning. What counts as “food for the soul” depends, in part, on where you come from.
The film extends that cultural distinction into the characters themselves, particularly through their careers. Ada’s background comes with the familiar pressure to pursue something prestigious and secure—doctor, lawyer, or another profession that carries a certain status. Trey, meanwhile, makes video games, a creative career that can be treated as less serious even though he is building something of his own. The contrast suggests two very different relationships with ambition: one shaped by the weight of expectations, the other by a little more room to choose.
That is where I found the writing most effective. Chieke is meticulous about establishing these differences, but for much of the film, she trusts the audience to recognize them without spelling everything out. The performances help keep the material from feeling overly heavy, and the film remains light on its feet even while dealing with questions of family, identity and belonging.
My one reservation is that the film occasionally loses that confidence in its audience. The conversation between Trey and his grandmother is a little too direct in explaining the cultural differences that the rest of the film has already established so well. The food exchange works precisely because it lets us understand the larger point ourselves. The grandmother scene, by comparison, doubles down on what we already understand. It’s a small distinction, and ultimately more a matter of preference than a major flaw, but I tend to respond more to stories that let the audience arrive at the meaning rather than pointing directly toward it.
Still, Food for the Soul leaves an impression because it finds something specific inside a familiar relationship story. Rather than simply saying that two people come from different cultures, it shows how those differences surface in the ordinary things: what you eat, what you do for a living, what your parents expect from you, and what each family considers a respectable future.
And honestly, I could see this concept working beyond 18 minutes. I’d be interested in a series built around couples from different Black cultural backgrounds, with each episode peeling back another layer of tradition, expectation and family. Food for the Soul already has the foundation for that kind of storytelling.
For now, though, the short succeeds on its own terms. It’s warm, culturally specific and easy to watch, while still giving its audience something to think about after the credits. Small in scale but clear in its perspective, Food for the Soul understands that sometimes the biggest cultural differences can be revealed by something as ordinary as what gets put on the dinner table.