Hard to Swallow
- Directed by: Tunde Wey & Theo Schear
- Released: 2025 (educational)
- Year of Production: 2024
Essayistic + reflexive, the series recounts Wey’s explosive career while building a critique of the social structures that disenfranchise Black peoples globally.
Traveling across the United States, Tunde investigates the ways food culture is shaped by race and class. Through unsparing interviews, poetic narration, and reflections on the filmmaking process, Tunde calls out individuals, systems and himself, prompting viewers to rethink their own position in system inequality.
Unlike any food show before, and despite the chef's exceptional taste, this show may be....
Hard to Swallow
Episode 1: THIS IS BLACK PEOPLE’S SHIT (Pilot)
Tunde reflects on the erasure of Black chefs from New Orleans’ food culture even as tourism and hospitality hold up the city’s economy. Tunde also examines how post-Katrina development, fueled by federal recovery dollars, drove gentrification in the city at the expense of Black New Orleanians. The expert for the episode is an award-winning journalist whose investigation of a food hall guides the episode, but when his interview takes an unexpected turn, the expert himself becomesthe subject of examination.
Episode 2: There is No Authority without Hypocrisy
Tunde visits Chef Syrena Johnson and revisits his conversation with the journalist, reflecting further on the first episode’s interwoven storylines. Quickly the story shifts to Detroit, Tunde’s first home in America. With an expired student visa, Tunde opened his first restaurant in 2013 when foodie culture was still nascent in Detroit. His experimental restaurant, (revolver), was an incubator for many other restaurateurs that have since transformed Detroit’s culinary landscape. In Episode 2, he returns to see how white developers, restaurateurs, nonprofits and big businesses have used food spaces to rebrand the city from failing to chic, and his own contribution to that narrative. Meanwhile, Tunde and Theo, the show’s co-director, are approached by their Hollywood heroine and start pitching this show to streamers.
Episode 3: A Great White Hope
Tunde visits two of Detroit’s mayors: Dennis Archer, who blames Detroit’s collapse on his notorious successor Kwame Kilpatrick; and Mike Duggan, the first white mayor in fifty years. After Tunde challenges the two mayors, the tables turn and Tunde becomes the subject of scrutiny at the first test screening of this docu-series. A critical audience dissects the cinematic decisions, illuminating a lacking analysis of gender issues in Detroit’s political story. In Episode 3’s self-reflexive timeline, Tunde and Theo’s Hollywood dreams hang in the balance and Tunde’s brother makes a comedic cameo.
Episode 4: They're Not the Oscar Committee
Tunde’s Nigerian food pop-ups in Detroit marked his professional entry into cooking, which coincided with leaving his restaurant, (revolver), after a dispute with his partner. Tunde takes his Nigerian pop up dinners on the road, exploring America for the first time while racking up publicity and strange encounters, before Episode 4 screeches to a halt on the eve of his big break. Back in the present timeline, Tunde and Theo process the feedback from their first test screening, and discuss the state of the media landscape with an ally in the industry before their star-studded screening in New York.
Episode 5: Honey, It's Probably a Porno
Tunde catches up with a vendor from the St. Roch Market, whose successful juice stand blossomed into several locations. But before Tunde can finish his lecture on racial disparity to the well-meaning white man, he interrupts himself from the editing suite, visibly frustrated by his own line of questioning. Ben, who documented much of Tunde’s early career, joins Tunde and Theo in the editing suite to watch his footage of
Tunde's pop up tour a decade ago. Tunde reminisces about the nerve-wrecking moments and crucial conversations that Ben miraculously captured during that pivotal time. An unexpected invitation makes the final test screening a celebration, setting up a dramatic season finale in France.
Episode 6: You're in the Show Now
The season finale of Hard To Swallow centers on an allegation of racism at the show’s world premiere in Cannes. A week of extravagant dinners and dizzying photoshoots against the lush views of the French Riviera culminate in the red carpet premiere. The festivities continue into the premiere afterparty where things turn sour when members of the Hard To Swallow team are accosted. The fallout from the incident is intense, tedious, and thoroughly documented, but the understanding of the story is up for debate. Noone is safe in this project, as Theo’s motivations come into question and Tunde’s evolving perspective begins to contradict his prior statements.
Official Selection at the 2024 SeriesFest and 2024 Cannes Series: Docuseries Competition
Tunde is a Nigerian immigrant artist, chef and writer working at the intersection of food and social politics. His work engages systems of exploitative power, particularly race, immigration, gentrification and global capitalism, and he uses food and dining spaces to confront and close the resulting disparities. Tunde is currently working on a memoir slated for a 2023 publish date from MCD (a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
Theo is a filmmaker and journalist from Oakland, California. He was an SFFILM FilmHouse Resident and a member of Detroit Public Television’s National Documentary Unit. His writing has appeared in publications such as Documentary Magazine, Nieman Lab, SFMOMA’s Open Space, and Film Threat.
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