Land of Milk and Honey

In her sumptuous latest, Zhang (How Much of These Hills Is Gold) turns her gaze on food. In a near future, climate change has produced an enveloping smog that has blocked the sun and caused devastating crop failures. An unnamed 29-year-old chef lands an intriguing job, cooking in an exclusive restaurant at a mountain retreat in Italy. Upon arriving, she discovers she has access to a trove of luscious food grown within the enclave’s smog-free environs. As she experiments with the rarest ingredients, the chef is slowly drawn into a web of deceit involving the retreat’s exclusive investors. Though always at a distance from the community members, the chef has an affair with her employer’s daughter and begins to indulge her appetites, both physical and culinary. As the political situation worsens, some are selected to be part of an exodus, while the chef, sickened by the inequity, contemplates a different future for herself.