Logline
After a family funeral draws her father back to his island home and exposes the betrayal that shamed him into silence for decades, a Philadelphia baker enters a nationally televised bake-off to reclaim her family's stolen cake recipe from the rival food empire it helped build.
Synopsis
Nearly forty years after leaving his island home, William Isreal returns for Mama Ide’s funeral and finally reveals to his family the betrayal and shame he's kept buried for decades. When they learn that a version of their family’s cake recipe helped build the rival Thistlethatch food empire, Elaine enters a nationally televised bake-off to reclaim what was stolen. Armed with the authentic recipe, the island’s special fruit, and a reunited family, she faces the Thistlethatch empire on a national stage—proving Dotty Ann right: you can’t steal what you don’t have the roots to understand.
Multigenerational Family Drama | Competition Drama Feature Film | In Development
Comparables
1997 | Soul Food - The direct lineage. Multigenerational Black family drama held together by a matriarch. The template.
2000 | le Chocolat - Proof a single recipe can carry the emotional weight of an entire film. The visual palette reference.
2006 | The Pursuit of Happyness - Philadelphia. Immigrant resilience. A father's dream — without sentimentality.
2007 | This Christmas - Soul Food with a holiday flavor. Proof this audience is loyal and comes back every year.
2021 | Encanto - Multigenerational wounds. The generation that breaks the cycle. Recent proof the market wants this.
The Audience Exists
The moment is now. It’s been nearly two decades since a multigenerational Black family drama owned the holiday season. Soul Food and This Christmas didn't just perform—they became part of the cultural calendar. That audience never left; they’ve been waiting.
A Recipe for Us is that film—blending ancestral roots and a stolen legacy with the high-stakes pressure of a national stage. It’s time for a new holiday classic.
If Soul Food provided the template for family drama and This Christmas gave it a holiday home, A Recipe for Us adds an island mystique to the visual magic of le Chocolat.
The Golden Apple
The Golden Apple in A Recipe For Us is real: Spondias dulcis, known across the Caribbean and Pacific islands as June Plum, ambarella, or pommecythere. Its distinctive fruit, the orchard, and the family’s Golden Apple Elixir are central to the story’s questions of inheritance, knowledge, and legacy.
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
Recognition received under the screenplay’s former title: A This and That Golden Holiday
SCREENWRITER
DR. LISA SUMMEROUR
Lisa Summerour is a writer, actor, author, lyricist, and Recalibration Strategist whose work explores identity, resilience, family, and the choices that shape a life.
She is the author of the award-winning book Divorce Is Not a Destination and an ASCAP songwriter whose original lyrics have been licensed for Netflix’s Lucifer.
Her acting credits include performances alongside Denzel Washington in Philadelphia, Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, and Forest Whitaker in The Enemy Within.
Lisa holds a doctorate in education and has spent more than two decades working in leadership development, coaching, and ethical leadership. She is also a keynote speaker, avid traveler, and lifelong creative who believes that stories can help people reclaim the parts of themselves they were taught to silence.
A Recipe For Us is her feature screenplay debut: a multigenerational family drama about stolen knowledge, inherited shame, and the legacies we choose to protect.
