East Side Sushi

East Side Sushi, the debut feature of Oakland native director Anthony Lucero, follows Juana, a single Mexican American mother in East Oakland, who takes a job at a Japanese restaurant after a robbery forces her to give up the family fruit cart, and finds her way into the world of sushi through raw talent. While researching his screenplay, Lucero realized he had never seen a female sushi chef and changed his originally male lead character into a woman. The film had its world premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival on March 8, 2014, winning the audience award for best narrative feature. The film holds around a 95 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Who it's for: anyone curious about an Oakland set film directly questioning who gets to be seen as "authentic," following a woman struggling for acceptance as a sushi chef because of her gender and ethnicity. Who it's not for: viewers looking for a film that celebrates a traditional culinary world without question, since this directly confronts the question of who counts as authentic.