Three Local Short Films Explore Vermont’s Food Scene

With such a rich and varied foodscape, it’s no surprise that Vermont inspires its filmmakers to document local eats and agriculture. For this week’s Food Issue, I watched three recent short films that delve into aspects of the state’s culinary culture. In style, they range from a galvanizing call to action to a mesmerizing meditation to a warmhearted tribute to a community fixture.

Let’s start with the extremely timely “La Liga,” a 26-minute documentary directed by MacPherson Christopher of Guilford and Paul Rosenfeld of Burlington. It’s about the immigrant workers who sustain Vermont’s dairy farms — “more than 1,200” of them, according to the film — and their habit of gathering to play soccer, culminating in a summer tournament.

While “La Liga” offers pleasant footage of people shooting goals on green fields, don’t expect an apolitical film about the joy of sport. Giving the players center stage to describe their lives, the filmmakers focus primarily on what the game makes possible: community building.

In subtitled Spanish, the farmworkers speak of grueling work schedules, violent employers and fear of leaving the farm — especially given the pace of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations under President Donald Trump.

Soccer helps these “hidden” people feel “like a family,” one interviewee suggests. Another wonders if the locals who express hostility toward migrant workers like him fail to grasp their role in Vermont’s food system. Milk, onions, tomatoes — as he succinctly puts it, “It all passes through immigrant hands.”

The soccer tournament depicted in the film doubles as an organizing opportunity: When it ends, players head straight to a Hannaford store, protest signs in tow. They’re pressuring the supermarket chain to join Milk With Dignity, a program that aims to improve the conditions of their lives by targeting the large corporations that small dairy farms supply.

The filmmakers use clips from an old educational film about Vermont’s milk production to underscore their point: Immigrants now keep this quintessentially “local” industry afloat. Anyone invested in Vermont’s food system should heed the fiercely articulate subjects of “La Liga,” which premiered on Vermont Public in November and will have more local screenings this summer, according to Rosenfeld. Look for it in Seven Days’ On Screen and calendar listings.

Another venerable local food tradition is the subject of the 30-minute “Sugarhouse,” from Marlboro director Jesse Kreitzer, which premiered in February at Montana’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and made its local debut at Montpelier’s Green Mountain Film Festival. Catch it at the Vermont International Film Foundation’s Made Here Film Festival on Friday, April 24, at Burlington Beer’s Lumière Hall.

Like “La Liga,” “Sugarhouse” features archival elements; among them is a rendition of the song “Maple Sweet” by Jim Douglas (not the former Vermont governor) with the cheery refrain “Bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan.” Kreitzer pairs this folk tune with a montage of sugar makers’ handwritten logs, full of exuberant and/or cryptic notations.

It’s a fun, high-energy interlude in a film that is otherwise compellingly meditative. Rather than attempt an overview of the maple industry, Kreitzer visits a succession of small sugarhouses, where old-timers deliver halting monologues accompanied by atmospheric imagery.

For Kreitzer’s subjects, sugar making is typically a family pursuit, handed down from father to son, that rewards patience and relative solitude. In the old days, one interviewee says, “You didn’t see people for weeks on end … Quiet’s nice.” Vermonters also bond over the boil, though. Another sugar maker recalls how neighbors used to interpret smoke from the sugarhouse as the signal to stop by with a six-pack.

No one speaks on camera in “Sugarhouse.” Instead, we hear them in voice-over as we watch steam billow from evaporators or (in a trippy moment) bubbles rise in amber syrup. Kreitzer’s artful approach makes us feel as if we’ve been invited into a private world where magic happens, though that strange realm might be as close as your neighbor’s shed.

Magic also happens in “Meze on Main Street: A Love Story,” a 28-minute doc from Samantha Davidson Green and first-time Upper Valley filmmaker Jim Zien that premiered in March at the White River Indie Festival. It’s a love letter to White River Junction restaurant Tuckerbox, a Turkish eatery that became an unlikely community hub.

Narrating in voice-over, Zien delves into the second “love story” behind the restaurant’s success. Married owners Vural and Jackie Oktay, who also own Burlington’s Cappadocia Bistro, discuss their meeting and culinary courtship. “All we ever talked about was food,” Jackie says with a smile, recalling how Vural used to cook for her on a dorm hot plate.

In Zien’s intimate portrait, we meet the Oktays’ three kids — who also love talking food — and tour their home, produce gardens and apiary. Vural explains what’s special about Turkish coffee, how to tell the future with an upturned cup and how such a prediction affected the evolution of the family business, which now also includes two Little Istanbul emporiums and WRJ’s Cappadocia Café. We accompany the family through vicissitudes, too, including a 2022 flood that struck while they were on vacation in Turkey and closed Tuckerbox for two months.

“Meze on Main Street” ends on a happier note, celebrating the appeal of international eats in a small town. Watch for more screenings later this year — because local film and local food make a great combination.

This article appears in The Food Issue • 2026.

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