Chilheads - A Capsaicin Extravaganza (AT)

Chiliheads is a charismatic road trip documentary with travel, cooking and lifestyle elements, which captures a worldwide tradition that has been spicing up lives and diets for thousands of years.

The 70-minute cinematic journey takes the audience on a search for the hottest chili in the world, portraying the influence and passion, which chili inspires in the lives of local people. It leads the audience into countries where spiciness plays an essential role in the cultural identity.

The film approaches this fascinating topic from different angles and tries to answer why the world has become more and more fascinated by chili and how the rising popularity has been justified over the last two decades. It provides an overview of the historical origins and spreading of chili, the chemical components and its measurements, its economical importance, religious and spiritual use, as well as the use of chili in medicine.

From a personal and human point of view, the viewer follows the protagonist meeting different people, each of whom shed light on the fascination of the chili myth. These include: a chili farmer in Mexico, the organisers of one of the biggest chili festivals in the world in the U.S., chili breeders from England, street food dealers from South East Asia and a chili researcher from Nagaland in India. Their stories and lives can’t be more different but they all have one thing in common: a fascination with and passion for chili!