What happens when filmmakers from around the world gather in an Italian city to tell stories about food? At the Bergamo Food Film Festival, the answer turns out to be about much more than beautiful dishes on a screen. Food becomes a way to talk about memory, place, health, agriculture, family, cultural identity and, perhaps most importantly, human connection.
My guest on this episode of the Flavor of Italy Podcast is Ryann Morris, founder of Food Brilliance and creator of the short documentary Food Is Everything. Ryann traveled from Florida to northern Italy after her film was selected as a finalist at the Bergamo Food Film Festival. She arrived expecting an interesting film festival and an opportunity to meet other filmmakers. She left feeling that the experience had changed her.
That transformation is at the heart of our conversation. We talk about the Bergamo Food Film Festival and the remarkable international films Ryann encountered there, but we also explore her own extraordinary relationship with food. It’s a story that moves from serious health challenges to Ayurvedic cooking, culinary school, a flourishing Florida food forest and a deeply personal philosophy about the power of food.
What Is the Bergamo Food Film Festival?
The Bergamo Food Film Festival takes place in Bergamo in Lombardy, the northern Italian region that’s also home to Milan. Bergamo and neighboring Brescia jointly held the title of Italian Capital of Culture in 2023, bringing even greater attention to two cities with exceptionally rich histories and food traditions.
Ryann attended the 13th edition of the Bergamo Food Film Festival, a four-day celebration that extended far beyond film screenings. The program included lectures, workshops, food demonstrations and tastings, all set within the historic atmosphere of Bergamo’s old city. For Ryann, who was attending her first film festival in person as a filmmaker, it quickly became clear that this wasn’t going to be an ordinary industry event.
Her documentary, Food Is Everything, had already been selected for inspirational and environmental film festivals, but the Bergamo Food Film Festival was the first festival devoted specifically to food where her film became a finalist. Once she began watching the other selected films, she understood why hers belonged there.
The films weren’t simply about cooking or chefs. They explored the land that produces our food, agricultural traditions, family memories, cultural identity and the people whose lives are connected to particular ingredients and dishes. Food was the starting point, but the stories were ultimately about people.
Food Memory on Film at the Bergamo, Italy Food Film Festival
One of Ryann’s favorite films at the Bergamo Food Film Festival was an animated short centered on a dish prepared by the filmmaker’s aunt. Through animation, the filmmaker explored the meat, rice and individual ingredients, along with their aromas and flavors, eventually bringing the viewer to the table with his aunt.
It was a story about food memory, something that anyone who has ever associated a particular dish with a parent, grandparent, holiday, childhood kitchen or place will immediately understand. We don’t experience food solely through taste. A smell can transport us instantly to another moment in our lives, while a recipe can carry the memory of someone we love long after that person is gone.
Other films took viewers to completely different places. One focused on plantains in central Nigeria and the women who prepare them, capturing their tremendous pride in their food traditions. Another explored the agricultural world surrounding Bergamo itself. Despite their geographical and cultural differences, the films shared something fundamental: respect for food as an expression of land, culture, history and human experience.
That common thread resonated strongly with Ryann because it’s also central to Food Is Everything. Her film asks us to look beyond what’s on the plate and become more aware of where food comes from, how we prepare it, how it makes us feel and the role it plays in our lives.
Experiencing Food With All the Senses at the Bergamo, Italy Food Film Festival
The Bergamo Food Film Festival wasn’t an experience confined to a movie screen. Ryann describes tastings and workshops that encouraged participants to slow down and pay attention to food in a way that we don’t always do in everyday life.
During one Slow Food workshop, she tasted a fresh goat’s milk ricotta. Instead of simply eating it, participants were instructed to place the ricotta in their mouths without immediately swallowing it. They were asked to notice its texture and flavor and allow themselves to experience what was happening.
That sounds deceptively simple, but it illustrates something important about the Italian relationship with food. Eating can be a sensory experience involving taste, aroma, texture, sound, sight and even anticipation. The festival invited people to taste, touch, listen and talk about food, creating an environment in which paying attention became part of eating.
For Ryann, this emphasis on sensory experience also connected directly to her own philosophy. She encourages people to enjoy the process of cooking itself: the steam rising from a pot, the sounds of chopping ingredients on a cutting board, the aromas developing as food cooks and the pleasure of transforming ingredients into a meal.
A Conversation About Corn That Became Something Much Bigger
One of the most memorable moments of the Bergamo Food Film Festival didn’t happen during a screening. It happened at a table.
On the final evening, before the awards ceremony, Ryann and her husband sat down with another couple while everyone enjoyed sparkling wine, cheese and other foods. Ryann began talking with the man beside her and discovered that one of the festival films was connected to corn grown by his family.
The conversation led to Gandino, a town in the Bergamo area with a fascinating corn tradition. He explained how his family had begun with a small number of corn seeds and how that corn had become part of a much larger local story. He showed Ryann photographs on his phone of spectacular golden cobs while his wife shared photographs of dishes she prepared at home and talked about their three sons.
Soon they weren’t strangers sitting beside one another at a film festival. They were sharing family stories.
The couple invited Ryann and her husband to visit their town the following day. Ryann couldn’t go because she was leaving for Milan, but the next morning the man came to their hotel bearing gifts.
That encounter captured everything Ryann had been seeing on screen throughout the Bergamo Food Film Festival. Food creates connections. An ingredient leads to a story, the story leads to a family, and before long people who met only an hour earlier are inviting one another into their lives.
Food Is Everything: Ryann Morris’s Personal Story
To understand Ryann’s documentary Food Is Everything, you need to understand how dramatically food changed her own life.
Her path began with a foot operation that went terribly wrong. She developed MRSA in her bones and faced the possibility of losing her foot. Powerful medications ultimately saved it, but Ryann says the treatment was followed by years of serious digestive and other health problems.
At her lowest point, even extremely simple foods were difficult for her body to process. She describes being unable to drive or safely hold a knife, an especially devastating situation for someone whose life and identity were tied to cooking.
Her recovery took years, and food gradually became an important part of the process. As she began to tolerate more ingredients, she became fascinated by the possibility of understanding food differently rather than simply returning to the way she had eaten before.
That curiosity eventually led her to Ayurveda and changed the course of her life.
What Is Ayurvedic Cooking?
Ayurveda is a traditional Indian system whose name derives from Sanskrit and is generally translated as “knowledge of life.” Its approach encompasses much more than food and includes ideas about living in harmony with nature, seasonal rhythms, movement, breath and preventative well-being.
For Ryann, Ayurvedic cooking offered a way to think about ingredients not only in terms of flavor, but also in terms of digestion and how food made her feel. As her health improved, she wanted to understand why particular foods, spices and combinations seemed to work better for her body.
Her discovery began, remarkably enough, with one plate of sautéed greens.
After years when eating in a restaurant had been difficult, Ryann’s husband asked where she wanted to go when she finally felt ready. Her answer was New York City. They traveled there from Maryland, where they were living at the time, and she ate at Divya’s Kitchen.
Something about a seemingly simple plate of greens tasted different. Ryann contacted chef Divya Alter to ask what was in it, and the answer introduced her to asafetida, also known as hing, a spice frequently used in Indian cooking.
But something else happened that mattered just as much. The chef took the time to answer Ryann’s questions carefully and explain the ingredient to a stranger who was struggling to understand food and her own body.
Ryann subsequently discovered that Divya taught Ayurvedic nutrition and cooking. Despite having two young children and continuing health challenges, Ryann enrolled and traveled between Maryland and New York for her studies. She eventually became an Ayurvedic chef herself.
One plate of greens had opened an entirely new door.
From Ayurvedic Cooking to Food Brilliance
Ryann eventually founded Food Brilliance, where she works with people individually in their own kitchens. She describes herself as a “boutique chef,” an apt description because her approach is highly personalized rather than based on one predetermined way of eating.
She learns about a client’s goals and challenges, develops recipes in her own kitchen and then brings those recipes into the client’s home so they can cook together. For clients dealing with medical issues, she may also work as part of a broader team and communicate with their healthcare professionals about dietary restrictions and individual needs.
The larger objective is empowerment. Rather than simply preparing food for someone, Ryann wants people, or sometimes their caregivers, to become comfortable preparing food themselves and to understand how different ingredients and cooking methods affect them.
At the same time, she doesn’t advocate a life governed by rigid food rules. That was something we both felt strongly about during our conversation. Food should support our well-being, but pleasure matters too. Ryann happily told me she’d eaten ice cream the previous evening - two servings, in fact - because she wanted it and thoroughly enjoyed it.
There’s an important distinction between paying attention to food and becoming afraid of it.
Whole Foods, Fresh Food and Paying Attention
When I asked Ryann how her everyday approach to eating had changed, one of the first things she mentioned was whole food. She tries to eat as little highly processed food as possible and, whenever she can, chooses fresh ingredients.
But she also acknowledges that “healthy” is a complicated word. What feels right for one person might not work for another, and access to freshly grown food varies enormously. Ryann happens to grow a remarkable amount of food herself, but she knows that isn’t realistic for everyone.
What interests me most about her philosophy is the idea of paying attention. How do you feel after eating something? How do you sleep? What gives you energy? What leaves you uncomfortable? Rather than accepting a universal set of rules, Ryann encourages people to become more conscious of their own relationship with food.
That doesn’t mean analyzing every bite. It means becoming curious.
From the Bergamo Food Film Festival to a Florida Food Forest
Ryann now lives in Delray Beach, Florida, where she has created an extraordinary food forest. It began in a wonderfully personal way. When she moved back to her native Florida from Maryland, she wanted somewhere to plant the moringa and curry trees that Chef Divya had given her as a graduation gift.
Those two trees became the beginning of something much larger.
Today she grows an array of edible and medicinal plants, including amla, neem and bitter melon. The garden reflects the same philosophy that shapes her cooking: understanding ingredients from the ground up and appreciating food as something alive rather than something that simply appears on a supermarket shelf.
That made her visit to northern Italy especially fascinating. Walking through a botanical garden near Bergamo, Ryann was surprised by how many familiar plants and trees she encountered. Figs, persimmons and chestnuts were among the foods that caught her attention.
For someone accustomed to noticing what grows around her, Italy became a landscape she could read through food.
Food, Gardens and Community
Ryann’s relationship with growing food extends beyond her own garden. She’s also involved with a community growing project near her home in Florida, a place where people gather not only to garden but also simply to be together.
Some participants love growing things. Others come for the social connection or because they want a peaceful place to sit. Everyone brings a different story, and the garden has developed its own history as trees are planted, food is harvested and people return year after year.
Potlucks are part of that community, and one appears naturally in Food Is Everything. People bring dishes to the table, but the most interesting part may be what happens when someone asks a simple question: “Tell me about your dish.”
Suddenly you’re no longer talking about a plate of food. You may be talking about someone’s grandmother, childhood, country of origin, family tradition or a recipe carried from one generation to another.
Why the Bergamo Food Film Festival Matters
That may be the most compelling message Ryann brought home from the Bergamo Food Film Festival. We often separate food into categories: restaurant food, home cooking, nutrition, agriculture, entertainment, tradition or pleasure. Yet food rarely occupies just one of those spaces.
A cob of corn can represent agricultural heritage and family history. An animated dish can preserve the memory of an aunt. A plate of greens can send someone in an entirely new professional direction. A community garden can give someone a place to grow vegetables while giving someone else a place where they feel they belong.
The Bergamo Food Film Festival brought those different dimensions of food together through film, tastings, workshops, conversation and the simple act of gathering around a table. Ryann went there because Food Is Everything had been selected as a finalist. What she discovered was an international community of people telling variations on a story she already deeply believed: food is never just food.
Listen to My Conversation With Ryann Morris
In this Flavor of Italy Podcast episode, Ryann and I talk about her experience at the Bergamo Food Film Festival, the films that moved her, her journey through years of serious health challenges, her introduction to Ayurveda, the creation of Food Brilliance and the lush food forest she now grows in Florida.
But our conversation continually comes back to something simpler. Food connects us to the land and to our own bodies, but it also connects us to one another. That’s as true at an international film festival in Bergamo as it is around a family table, at a community garden potluck or over a handful of figs shared with a friend.
As Ryann says in Food Is Everything, food is powerful if you let it be. After hearing her story and her experience in Bergamo, it’s difficult to disagree.
More about eating healthy, and well in Italy
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