Directed by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya, Netflix’s new dystopian thriller ‘The Kitchen’ follows the life of a character called Izi (played by the rapper Kano) who works at a company called “Life After Life”, a tree planting funeral business. In 'The Kitchen,' “Life After Life” is portrayed as a for-profit funeral establishment providing customers cremation, with the ashes utilized in cultivating plants dedicated to the memory of the departed.
In response to being prominently featured as a plot point in the Netflix movie, ‘The Kitchen’. We at the real Life After Life Foundation, the 501(c)3 nonprofit, would like to reiterate that our mission is to circumvent many of the very poignant problems portrayed in the movie itself, as it comes to inequality, exploitation, and the inscrutable practices historically scene across the traditional consumerist deathcare industry that persists today. Over everything, we at the real Life After Life are committed to the sanctity and respect due to all of our members for the gift that they choose to give back to the world through their personal piece of the Living Memorial Parks.
It is wonderful to see our concept adopted as futurism for the purposes of a movie, but regret that it was used in a way that evokes fear, when in fact the scariest reality is that we continue with the status quo in a world with a population of over 8 billion people.
Change is scary. It is incredibly difficult to shift public perceptions in an industry where the majority of people are uncomfortable even talking about the subject. For hundreds of years in America, the entrenched consumerist funeral industry has been decimating our communities and environment with their unsustainable practices. High budget futurism movies like this have the opportunity to paint a different picture for a wide audience and change public perceptions. It would have been nice to see our organization, when used with our real name, fictionally portrayed without the negative distortions (that realistically served no purpose to the plot). To be clear, no conversations were ever had directly with representatives of the movie.
With 60 million deaths globally in a typical year, a biodiversity crisis driven by ravenous habitat destruction, unmitigated air pollution, and the consequences of abandoned industrialism seen in every city in the world – let us try to remember that innovations that reimagine our current industry paradigms may be our only solutions in the face of paralyzed public institutions.
