• Trailer

LOGLINESometimes a meatball is not just a meatball... A local chef’s vegan entry sparks outrage at a local meatball contest and a Philadelphia neighborhood is forced to grapple with identity, tradition, and change.

SYNOPSISShe Got Balls! is a sharp, engaging short documentary that uses a South Philadelphia meatball contest to explore food, identity, and the tensions of cultural change. When a rumor spreads that a vegan meatball has taken first prize, the neighborhood “loses its mind”. Online and offline, residents debate what it means to preserve tradition in the midst of gentrification and generational shifts.At once humorous and deeply human, She Got Balls! is an engaging entry point for classroom discussions about foodways, ethnicity, social media, migration, and urban transformation.

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Runtime: 20 minutes

Inside a seemingly simple meatball contest is a portrait of a changing neighborhood: tradition and modernity; inclusion and exclusion; immigrants old and new; the invention of traditions—and nations! Wow. And starting it all is a lump of ground meat, some parsley and some breadcrumbs. Or is it some chickpeas, onions and garlic? Hess’s film uses this cultural flashpoint to succinctly use the meatball as the lens by which to examine our dynamic city.Jonathan Deutsch, PhD
Professor of Culinary Arts and Science
and Director, Drexel Food Lab
Drexel University

This playful yet pointed short film asks stirring questions about ethnicity, identity, and community. It generously chronicles the Italian-American spaces of South Philadelphia as it reflects on insiders and outsiders—or what the “palate” accepts or rejects. While it documents social conflict, She Got Balls! remains optimistic about the resilience of community and its capacity for reinvention.Elisa Camiscioli, PhD
Professor of History
SUNY Binghamton