Recipe for reflection: Concordian’s film taps into food and family

“Chi mangia solo” means “Who eats alone” in Italian. It’s also the title of Acton filmmaker Francesco Aram Zenati’s new short film, which premiered this summer at the Provincetown International Film Festival.

The complete Italian saying is, “Chi mangia solo, crepa solo,” which means, “Who eats alone, dies alone.” 

That sentiment is at the heart of Zenati’s 16-minute film about a brother and sister who come together for one last night in their childhood home, cooking their late mother’s recipe and “finding their way back to each other,” Zenati says.

“The film is about the immigrant experience, about grief and how cooking can be a form of therapy,” he says. “These two siblings cooking a family recipe after their mother has died allows them to share the experience of their mother’s death.”

‘A really intimate quality’

Valerie Deus is the short film programmer for this year’s Provincetown festival. She says she received more than 1,000 submissions for the short film category. Zenati’s was one of 47 short films she selected.

“I thought that Francesco’s film had a really intimate quality to it. It was universal in the sense of dealing with grief,” Deus says. “We love to be able to highlight new filmmakers with new voices and new things to say. We encourage our filmmakers to reach for the stars, especially when you come across somebody so talented, like Francesco.”

Zenati, 31, was born in Pittsburgh to parents who emigrated from Verona, Italy, in the early 1990s. Zenati’s father is a surgeon and felt he would have more professional opportunities in the United States than in Italy.

“I was raised between [Pittsburgh] and Italy, going back and forth when I was a kid,” Zenati says. “My poor parents were figuring it out as they went along. They’ve been having the same conversation for the last 30 years: ‘One day we’ll go back to Italy.’”

Zenati, who is fluent in English and Italian, says he feels both Italian and American. His family moved to Boston when he was in high school and in 2021 found their way to Acton, where they have lived since.

Strawberry Hill forever

The house shown in the film, shot in January 2025, is Zenati’s parents’ home on Strawberry Hill in Acton. The brother and sister are played by film veterans Philip Ettinger and Victoria Pedretti.

“This is a very personal story,” Zenati says. “My mother’s voice is the voice memo in this film. The recipe takes the form of a voice memo [Ettinger and Pedretti] listen to together. They make baccala all vicentina. It’s a cod dish made with milk and parmesan and onions and parsley. An Old World recipe, served with polenta, from the Veneto region that my grandma always used to make.”

Additional scenes in the film were shot at The Umbrella Arts Center on Elm Street. Acton Market catered the shoot, and the crew would often gather at Haute Coffee on Walden Street for production meetings.

“Random Acton people would come up [and say], ‘Oh, what are you doing? How can we help? Is there anything you need?’” Zenati says. “They were super-excited and wanted to be helpful. It’s the most Acton thing ever.”

Zenati has already had a career as a film and television executive but always wanted to get behind the camera. After graduating from New York University, where he studied film and literature, Zenati went to Hollywood “to see what it’s about,” and landed a job as a filmmaker’s assistant.

After moving on to work in television, finding shows that could translate across borders, Zenati most recently was a senior executive at Bron Studios, the company behind “Joker” and “Licorice Pizza.” But he found himself longing for exciting stories and films outside the mainstream.

When Bron declared bankruptcy in 2023 — a victim of many factors, Zenati said, including the pandemic, AI, and the Writers Guild strike — Zenati decided to go all in on making his own films.

“I thought it was time to take the leap and go make these things myself,” he says. “That is the unknown, taking that risk upon yourself, [but] if you’re going to take a swing and build something ambitious, now is the time.”

A step toward Oscar

Getting his film into the Provincetown lineup is an important step toward his dream because the festival helps a picture attain Academy Award consideration.

“If you participate in three Oscar-qualifying festivals, your film can be voted on for Best Short Film at the Oscars,” Zenati says. 

The filmmaker recently learned that “Chi Mangia Solo” is screening at two more Oscar-qualifying festivals: The Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival in early August and the HollyShorts Film Festival in Los Angeles later in the month.

The real prize for Zenati would be the opportunity to turn his short film into a feature-length motion picture.

“Both actors expressed interest in making a feature,” he says. “The crew is excited. I’m currently writing that script. We’re looking for financing and collaborators. I’m hoping to get this across the line to make it into a feature shared more widely and seen by more people.”