Director: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Set entirely inside the chaos of a Manhattan tourist restaurant, La Cocina turns a single lunch rush into a pressure cooker for everyone working the line.
What is La Cocina about?
At The Grill, a packed New York restaurant built for tourists rather than regulars, a Friday shift starts falling apart the moment money goes missing from the register. As management pulls kitchen staff aside one by one to answer for the shortfall, the film tracks how quickly suspicion spreads through a workforce made up of immigrants holding the restaurant together from the back of house. Alonso Ruizpalacios builds the entire story around that single shift, letting the noise, heat, and grievances of the kitchen stand in for a much larger picture of who keeps a city fed and who gets blamed when something goes wrong.
Cast & crew
Raúl Briones leads the kitchen staff at the center of the shortage, with Rooney Mara playing a waitress whose relationship with him complicates the day further. Anna Díaz, Motell Gyn Foster, and Laura Gómez round out the crew under pressure, while Oded Fehr and James Waterston appear as the restaurant's ownership, watching the shift unravel from the other side of the kitchen door.
Context & significance
La Cocina premiered in 2024 as a US, Mexican, and Swedish co-production directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, and carries an IMDb rating around 7.0. Shot mostly in tight, overlapping takes inside the restaurant's kitchen, the film uses the confined setting to build tension without ever leaving the building, turning a routine lunch service into a portrait of labor, class, and who gets to belong in a city built by outsiders.
Where & how to watch
La Cocina is available on K-Time with both a Farsi dub and Farsi subtitles, giving Persian-speaking viewers a choice in how they watch. The page is free to read on its own; streaming the film requires only a K-Time account login, inside an interface built around Farsi throughout.