Written by Ljiljana Maletin Vojvodić //

Matt Johnson’s Tony, which had its Nordic premiere at the Way Out West Festival in Gothenburg on August 13 at Capitol Cinema, offers a glimpse into the formative years of the man who would go on to change the way we think about food, travel, and restaurant culture.

The film centres on one particular summer in 1975 in Provincetown. It is there, almost by chance, while following the girl he is in love with, that 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain, played by Dominic Sessa, steps into a professional kitchen for the first time and discovers his future calling.

Johnson successfully recreates the atmosphere of the 1970s, as well as the particular world behind the closed doors of a restaurant kitchen. Despite the brilliance of the head chef, played by Antonio Banderas, the kitchen is not portrayed as a temple of fine dining, but as a refuge for social outsiders and eccentrics. It is in this environment that young Tony undergoes a kind of initiation.

As an older chef and mentor, Banderas’s character teaches Tony more than culinary skills. He introduces him to the survival code of the kitchen trade—a world to which Bourdain would remain devoted until his tragic death. Drawing on motifs and stories from Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential, the film does not shy away from his early vices or youthful sense of being lost, instead presenting them as part of the journey that shaped him.

The strong audience response to the Nordic premiere at Way Out West—and the applause that followed the screening—showed that Bourdain’s legacy remains very much alive. Tony is both a moving tribute to his beginnings and a fitting portrait of the experiences that helped shape the man he would become.