Award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt offers a fascinating exploration of the soul food tradition, its relevance to Black cultural identity, and its continuing popularity despite the known dangers of high-fat, high-calorie diets.

Inspired by his father's lifelong love affair with soul food even in the face of a life-threatening health crisis, Hurt discovers that the relationship between African-Americans and dishes like ribs, grits, and fried chicken is deep-rooted and culturally based. At the same time, he moves beyond matters of culture and individual taste to show how the economics of the food industry have combined with socioeconomic conditions in predominantly Black neighborhoods to dramatically limit food choices.

The result is an absorbing and ultimately inspiring look at the cultural politics of food and the complex interplay between identity, taste, power, and health. Features soul food cooks, historians, doctors, and food justice movement activists who are challenging the food industry, creating sustainable gardens, and advocating for better supermarkets, more farmers' markets and healthier takes on soul food.

"Examines how black cultural identity is linked to high-calorie, high-fat food such as fried chicken and barbecued ribs and how eating habits may be changing"- New York Times

"A vastly entertaining, hilarious, passionate, revelatory and thoroughly researched documentary which examines Soul Food's significance in Black American culture... Easily one of the year's best."- IndieWire"

"Hurt's film takes a historical, cultural and culinary journey to the origins of soul-food traditions and their complex connection to Black identity. Telling it like it is, Soul Food Junkies illuminates the good, bad and ugly truths about ribs, fried chicken, macaroni-and-cheese and all those potentially dangerous fixins'."- Philly.com

The documentary aims to shed light on a topic shrouded in much mystique, negativity, superstition and ignorance, to allow for informed discourses on the subject without fear of persecution or oppression. Through video interviews, a range of individuals of different faiths in the United Kingdom share their experiences and knowledge of these esoteric systems and their perceptions of them in light of other established religions and mainstream media coverage of these esoteric systems. Traditional shaman from the Greater Accra, Eastern and Ashanti regions in Ghana, West Africa, are also interviewed to provide authentic accounts of their cosmologies, practices and esoteric spiritual systems.

There will be a Q&A session with the director Verona Spence-Adofo.