Good food films make you want to eat but the great ones make you want to cook. Mostly Martha has all the ingredients of the latter: it is a feast for the senses, from the mise en place – julienning carrots here, encasing tortellini in sheets of pasta there – to the cast iron pans, chef’s knives and jars of preserved goods that put our home kitchens to shame.
Working in a busy restaurant in snowy Germany, head chef Martha (Martina Gedeck) is a perfectionist. The kitchen is her sanctuary and, when it gets too much, the walk-in fridge is her refuge. Uptight but passionate, no one dares disrupt her finely balanced equilibrium. But when her sister dies in a car crash, Martha must take in her niece, Lina (Maxime Foerste), while adapting her strict routines to the needs of a child, finding the time and the heart to step away from the stove.
