Mostly MarthaMovies like Mostly Martha
- Key Features:
- Chef, Family drama, Grief, Responsibility, Cooking, Personal growth, Unexpected relationship, Coping with loss, Finding family, Independent woman
- Tone:
- restrained, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Fans of independent films, Viewers interested in character-driven stories, Those who enjoy food-related films
- Emotional Arc:
- Solitude → Grief → Connection
Mostly Martha

Martha is a single woman who lives for one passion: cooking. The head chef at a chic restaurant, Martha has no time for anything - or anyone - else. But Martha's solitary life is shaken when a fateful accident brings her sister's eight-year-old daughter, Lina, to her doorstep.
Mostly Martha
Master chef Kate Armstrong runs her life and her kitchen with intimidating intensity. However, a recipe for disaster may be in the works when she becomes the guardian of her young niece while crossing forks with the brash sous-chef who just joined her staff. Though romance blooms in the face of rivalry, Kate needs to look outside the kitchen to find true happiness.

A French woman mourning over the death of her husband three years prior is courted by a Swedish co-worker.

A 40-year-old world-famous chef with anger management issues is assigned to run a cooking class at a centre for young people with autism.

The wife of a successful chef feels unfulfilled in her rôle as dining-room hostess and consults career counselor, who is herself dissatisfied by her useful but mundane place in the scheme of things. Without meaning to, the two women find their lives growing tangled together, with ever more complex tragicomic consequences.

While on a Mediterranean vacation, a seemingly happy boyfriend and girlfriend find their connection to one another tested as they bond with another couple.

Cathy is a sous-chef wanting to open a restaurant. With financial difficulties, Cathy accepts a job at a shelter for young migrants. At first she hates the job then her passion for cuisine starts to change children's lives.

Louise meets Nathan, her dreams resurface. It's also the story of her ailing brother, their mother, and the destiny of a leading family of wealthy Italian industrialists. The story of a family falling apart, a world coming to an end and love beginning.

After losing his beloved mother, a man risks everything to honor her by opening an Italian restaurant with actual nonnas — grandmothers — as the chefs.

Soof is reaching 40 and has everything she ever wanted: three children, a small catering business, a sweet husband Kasper and a lovely home. Until she starts asking herself: 'is this all there is'?

Mourning his brother's recent death, Pierrick accepts his best friend Tessa's invitation to stay in her family home — at last, a week alone. But when her gets there, he finds the house already occupied by Tessa's sister Marie.

When kitchen fitter Niller comes to install Sus's new suite, their immediate attraction to one another proves a sweet escape from both of their problematic relationships.

Alper is a renowned chef in his 30s at his own luxury restaurant. He lives an isolated life and spends his nights with one-night stands and paid intercourses. One day, his life changes utterly when his path crosses with Ada and gets enamored by her casual and modest outlook at life. As they start to get romantically involved, Alper must also overcome his chronic feeling of desolateness.

Marie, an independent and militant woman, has never needed anyone's help, including when it comes to raising her son. When the latter is expelled from his certificate of professional competence training class, Marie cannot accept it. Dreaming of a brighter future for him, she decides to enrol him in one of the best cooking schools in France.

When a Danish chef travels to Tuscany to sell his father's business, he meets a local woman who inspires him to rethink his approach to life and love.

In Hamburg, German-Greek chef Zinos unknowingly disturbs the peace in his locals-only restaurant by hiring a more talented chef.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

Rob Haley, an up-and-coming chef and restaurateur in London, is grief-stricken when he loses his wife. With encouragement from his infamous friend and real life TV Chef Gordon Ramsay, Rob decides to spice up his life by turning a run-down country pub into a gourmet restaurant. His food catches the eye - and taste buds - of beautiful American food critic Kate Templeton and they soon both write a recipe for love that leaves both their hearts - and their stomachs - in full.

Victor is a cook who works in a greasy roadside restaurant owned by his mother, Dolly. It's just the two of them, a waitress named Delores, and a heavy drinking regular, Leo. But things change when Callie, a beautiful college dropout, shows up as a new waitress and steals Victor's heart. But Victor is too shy to do anything about it, and too self-consciously overweight to dream of winning Callie away.

The story of Danièle Delpeuch and how she was appointed as the private chef for François Mitterrand.

Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.

Maxi thinks his life is perfect. He is a famous cook who owns a successful restaurant in Chueca and is living his life as a gay man without much complex. But when his son Edu and his daughter Alba appear, and a new attractive neighbor comes along, it will have a strong effect on his life resulting in his values being challenged for ever.

Pietro is a successful businessman with a wife and a daughter. One day he helps his brother save two women from drowning at the beach. When he returns home he finds that his wife has died. Now Pietro has to take care of his daughter, Claudia. When he drives her to school soon after, he decides to wait for her all day in front of the school, and soon that's what he does every day.

François and Charlotte directed together a gourmet hotel and restaurant on the edge of the sea, but their marital relationship is not fixed beauty: obsessive hard, Francis wants his first star in the Michelin Guide while Charlotte, at the dawn of the quarantine, dreams of a first child. This already complicated situation will literally explode the day where Charlotte's first husband, Alex, disembarked in their lives while everyone believed him dead in the terrible tsunami of 2004...

A Mexican-American master chef and father to three daughters has lost his taste for food but not for life.

A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.

Mikel, a young cook, meets with his father Juan, who had been missing for 30 years. While trying to keep his restaurant afloat, Mikel has to take care of crazed Juan, a former cook who suffers from a mental condition that prevents him from recognizing neither the aforementioned time gap nor his son Mikel.

Overweight and insecure, Simi spends Easter weekend with her famous nutritionist aunt. The hope is that it’ll help her get on a healthier track, but as the aunt’s family’s icy dynamics and an increasingly malevolent atmosphere leave Simi feeling uneasy, weight isn’t the only thing she’s about to lose.

The movie portrays the story of an Italian family emigrated in Germany in the 1970s. Romano (Gigi Savoia), the father, decides to open a pizzeria which, by mutual decision with the wife Rosa (Antonella Attili), will call Solino, leaving his sons Gigi and Giancarlo to work there. A hostile relationship comes to life between the father and his sons, which will end up in the escape of the boys from family.

Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.

Max is 6 years old. She lives with her dad Toni, a small time crook with a golden heart. For Xmas, Max offers him Rose, a call-girl found on the street whom she’s very fond of. Despite the complicated situation, Toni’s gonna have a hard time refusing her daughter’s «gift» and must coexist with Rose.

After a life-changing diagnosis, a promising chef finds hope and humor with the help of a fur-midable dog friend.

Ava, an award-winning chef at a big-city restaurant, has lost her spark. Her boss sends her out to find herself to save her menu and her job. She returns home and finds little to inspire her, but when she reunites with her childhood friend Logan, Ava has to get her head out of the clouds and her foot out of her mouth to rediscover her passion for food.

Alice and Louis are brother and sister. She is an actress; he was a teacher and poet. For more than 20 years, Alice has hated her brother. In all this time they haven’t seen one another. The death of their parents brings the siblings face to face.

Maggie and Carsten love each other, they have two wonderful children and run their own gourmet restaurant; Malus. They want it all. And they have it all. Almost. They are missing the coveted Michelin Star. It has been their dream, on which they gambled everything to win. One day Carsten receives a letter saying that his wife loves somebody else. But who sent the letter and why? In their continuous passion and pursuit for the ultimate recognition, they forget that the meals of life are best enjoyed together.

France, 1789 - just before the Revolution. When talented chef Manceron is dismissed from his prestigious position by the Duke of Chamfort, he loses the taste for cooking. But when he meets the mysterious Louise, together they decide to create the very first restaurant in France.

During their vacation in the French countryside, a wealthy German family becomes entangled with a young hotel worker harboring sinister intentions.

Sandra, a young woman forced to leave the south of France to flee a violent husband. Without attachment, she returned to Boulogne-sur-Mer, the city of her childhood which she left almost 15 years ago. She finds her mother there and a world she left behind. Without money, she is hired in a fish cannery where she befriends two workers. But one day, one of her colleagues tackles her insistently, she defends herself and kills him accidentally.

A head chef balances multiple personal and professional crises at a popular restaurant in London.

Irene lives in Rome. When her mother ask to, she go back to Rimini, her hometown, to take care of her autistic brother, Omar. She soon discover that Omar knows very well what to expect from the future, but in order to achieve his dreams, he need to be independent, which is why Irene begins a tender crash course to teach him adult life.

Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.

David, who gets by doing odd jobs, meets Léna, who has just moved up to Paris, and falls in love. But soon after, his life is brutally interrupted by the sudden death of his sister. Beyond the shock, and the pain, David now finds himself alone with his young niece Amanda to care for.

Meet Neslihan. A perfect cook, an expert on Turkish cuisine, strictly loyal to her husband, an impeccable house wife ...and a serial killer.

Jacques and Martine, an ordinary bourgeois couple, invite to dinner a friend whom they have not seen the last ten years. Since then he has become a media star and everything has to go just right at dinner.

Single mother Paulette decides to make up for her mistake by cooking a chicken with peppers for her daughter—only she can't cook and shopkeepers are on strike.

Tom is a British chef in a Bondi restaurant who seems to have decided there are no longer any rules he needs to obey. Whatever Tom is up to, his actions seem to be tolerated by those around him. As Tom descends into darkness, fragments of a different story begin to emerge. All the women in his world are trying in their own, very different ways to help put him back together.

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

A talented young street-food cook pushes herself to the limit after accepting an invitation to train under an infamous and ruthless chef.

Just as Simone works up the courage to tell her conservative Jewish family she's a lesbian, she finds herself attracted to a male Senegalese chef.

A French housekeeper with a mysterious past brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late 19th century Denmark.

After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha finds herself caught up in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her.

Emma has left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend, makes her senses kindle.

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce.

Étienne is barely twenty when he falls in love with Valérie. They are hardly any more when their daughter Rosa is born. And then, one day, Valérie leaves and never returns. He chooses not to make a drama of it and builds a happy life for him and his child. Sixteen years later, when Rosa is about to lead her own life, Étienne recognizes his wife in a television report. The past brutally resurfaces, and father and daughter are propelled into one last chaotic family journey.

Julia Child and Julie Powell – both of whom wrote memoirs – find their lives intertwined. Though separated by time and space, both women are at loose ends... until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.

Gerard is tired of being taken for a good apple by his beautiful family. He leaves everything and starts a garage in a village nestled at the bottom of the Gâtinais ... In front of the garage, there is a lovely inn, run by Barbara: a beautiful woman, disconcerting, mysterious, unpredictable. Their encounter will spark ...

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

When Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen -- and zest for life and love.

Young Nigel Slater has big culinary aspirations, even though all his mother knows how to make is toast. When his mother dies, relations grow strained between Nigel and his father, especially when he remarries a woman who wins his heart with a lemon meringue pie. Nigel enters culinary school, starts working in a pub, and finds himself competing with his stepmother - both in the kitchen and for his father's attention.

After her mother's death, six-year-old Frida is sent to her uncle's family to live with them in the countryside. But Frida finds it hard to forget her mother and adapt to her new life.

The story of a family and a love affair told through the journey of a young woman called Suzanne.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

At dawn, Clarisse takes a last look at her husband and two sleeping children, hesitates to leave a note, and hits the road. A desperate escape that gradually reveals its layers as Clarisse — who seems to have an extra-sensory connection to the family she has left behind — loses herself in the world.

Daphne is a young woman negotiating the tricky business of modern life. Caught in the daily rush of her restaurant job and a nightlife kaleidoscope of new faces, she is witty, funny, the life of the party. Too busy to realise that deep down she is not happy. When she saves the life of a shopkeeper stabbed in a failed robbery, the impenetrable armour she wears to protect herself begins to crack, and Daphne is forced to confront the inevitability of a much-needed change in her life.

Jérôme Varenne, a French financier, lives and works in Shanghai with Chen-Li, his life and business partner. One day, during a short stay in Paris, while paying a call to his mother, he is very displeased to learn from her and his hated brother, that the family house in Ambray is going to be sold. Jerome decides to go to the town where he grew up to see what is going on. Little does he know how eventful his escapade will be. Little does he know that it will change his life from soup to nuts...

Broke, with nothing but her cat to her name and doors closing in her face, Paula is back in Paris after a long absence. As she meets different people along the way, there is one thing she knows for sure: she's determined to make a new start and she'll do it with style and panache.

Marleen is in her early 20s, works in a movie theater, still lives at home and is somehow aimless. Her parents torment her with questions about her future and her brother is a high-flyer who has already traveled halfway around the world. When a tragic accident plunges her into sheer endless grief, Marleen just wants to get away. Equipped with the bare essentials, she sets off on a journey into the unknown.

Sophie is far from being the model little girl one would like her to be, unlike her friends Camille and Madeleine. She always insists on having her own way, often getting into trouble, to the despair of one and all. But her mother is unbending and otherwise inclined. She will not let her get away with anything, and poor Sophie will often have to live with the consequences of her bad behaviour and learn her lesson.

Sophie and Vincent’s small butcher shop is on the brink of bankruptcy and their marriage is falling apart. Their lives are turned upside down when Vincent accidentally kills a vegan activist who vandalized their shop. Overwhelmed and terrified of being accused of murder, their only solution is to get rid of the body by turning it into ham. To their surprise the ham is so popular that it may save their business… that is if they’re ready to keep “hunting"!

Samantha, who works in a chicken factory in Saint-Étienne, loses her job. She lives with her best-friend Céline. She is also her little sister Kim's guardian and must find another job quickly or run the risk of losing her sister. She meets Paul, a lawyer who would like to raise a child with his partner. As a result, he asks Samantha if she would like to be hired as his surrogate.

At 40, Molina is the most famous radio host in France: she hosts a nightly call-in show where she answers questions from callers with sexual and emotional problems. When she decides to look for her mother whom she never knew, she discovers her living in the suburbs.

Simone inherits a dilapidated farmhouse in France and makes her way there with her husband Eric and their two children. Her dream is to turn the house into a bed and breakfast but as the hectic pace of the rebuilding gets underway, she gets caught up in the romance and chaos of it all. Losing sight of her goals, she must find her way back to the dreams and ambitions which brought her there in the first place.

A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.

On the eve of his wedding, a successful writer travels around the country to meet up with ex-lovers in an attempt to make amends for his wrongdoings.

The story of a young mother with a failed marriage behind her, who fights daily for her dream to open a hair salon, challenging her fate in an effort to free herself and gain independence and right to happiness.

Antonio is a 30 year old family man, whose life finds an unexpected twist when he's suddenly dumped by his husband, whom he depends both psychologically and economically: he needs to find a new place to stay, a job and a new purpose in life. Antonio finds a room in an apartment owned by Denis and starts to work in a bakery owned by Luca, while attending pastry school. Through this process he discovers that it was wrong of him to give up his independence for the sake of his relationship in the past.

A great French restaurant's owner, Monsieur Septime, is thrust into intrigue and crime, when one of his famous guests disappears.

A son in denial of a serious illness. A mother facing the unbearable. And between them a doctor fighting to do his job and bring them to acceptance. The three of them have one year and four seasons to come together and understand what it means to die while living.

Marilou and Philippe prepare for their future retirement in Portugal. But their daughter separates and a whole procession of solicitations falls on them.

Tormented and left for dead by a scorned lover, a woman finds the strength within herself to recover and retaliate against her abuser.

Irene, a workaholic, is forced to re-evaluate her priorities after the suicide of her two best friends.

A story centered around an Indian family who moves to France and opens a restaurant across the street from a Michelin-starred French restaurant.

Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...

Antoine, a bachelor party-goer, gets new roommates: Jeanne and her two children.

Yann, a cook, and Nadia, a waitress and mother of 9-year-old child, decide to risk everything on the purchase of a restaurant. With plenty of talent, energy, love and dreams, but no finance of their own, they find themselves forced into a jungle of financing and bank loans that quickly overwhelms them. To bail them out, Nadia has to take a job in Canada, while Yann is forced to stay behind to save the restaurant. Together, he and the child confront a relentless avalanche of creditors, an uncaring system and the daily grind from which there is no respite… Yann finally understands that his only chance of salvation lies in joining his lover – as well as reuniting mother and child – by following Nadia to Canada and a better life.

A strange and destructive relationship develops between a chef and her neighbor, a former child actress.

Three strong-willed women strive to forge their own paths amidst the wide-open plains of the American Northwest: a lawyer forced to subdue a troubled client; a wife and mother whose plans to construct her dream home reveal fissures in her marriage; and a lonely ranch hand who forms an ambiguous bond with a young law student.

When Lisa's younger sister suddenly disappears without a trace, she returns to her home village to search for the missing girl on her own. But before she can follow up a real lead, a dead girl is found by the river.

A young woman who dreams of opening her own restaurant lands a job at a prominent restaurant whose head chef becomes her unlikely ally when the restaurant's unscrupulous owner, a Master Chef herself, plots to return the place to its former glory by presenting her new assistant's recipes as her own.

A woman sexually assaulted by her new boss's brother-in-law tries to move on as if nothing happened, but the night weighs heavily on her mind and body.

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

A veteran chef faces off against his restaurant group's new CEO, who wants to the establishment to lose a star from its rating in order to bring in a younger chef who specializes in molecular gastronomy.

Remy, a resident of Paris, appreciates good food and has quite a sophisticated palate. He would love to become a chef so he can create and enjoy culinary masterpieces to his heart's delight. The only problem is, Remy is a rat. When he winds up in the sewer beneath one of Paris' finest restaurants, the rodent gourmet finds himself ideally placed to realize his dream.

Felix and Martha, the two offspring of legendary serial murderer The Skinner of Mons, grapple with the grotesque legacy bequeathed to them. While Martha works a menial janitorial job, Felix continues his father's reign of terror. But following a brutal attack at work, Martha quickly descends into madness, finding she must come to terms with the infamous blood that flows through her veins.

Sandra is a young woman who has only one weekend to convince her colleagues they must give up their bonuses in order for her to keep her job — not an easy task in this economy.

Marcelle Toing, owner of the best restaurant in Rio de Janeiro, must go on missions to steal ingredients from human restaurants to keep his meals the best.

Franck wants a quiet life and a fresh start. After 15 years of a failed theatre career, he finds a seemingly perfect job: museum guard. But that is before he meets Sybille, his neurotic colleague.


