Tired of his city being slept on, George Kalivas is determined to put Windsor, Ontario on the map with his new documentary, The Pizza City You’ve Never Heard Of.
The Warner Music hip-hop marketer was hurt by the fact that his hometown was completely ignored on lists of the top pizza cities in the world, so he embarked on a road trip to explore the most underrated and well-established pizza places in Windsor.
Kalivas, along with director Tristan Laughton, gathered evidence of Ontario’s possible pizza holy grail by talking with suppliers, pizza joint owners, and experts about the essential characteristics that give meaning to a true Windsor pie.
“I’ve had the idea for this doc in the back of my mind since I was 18 years old, and it was incredible to finally make it happen. Everything we make together comes through the lens of hip-hop, and The Pizza City You’ve Never Heard Of is no different,” Kalivas tells Complex. “The original score that Dom Dias created is a mixtape in itself.”
The team will debut the documentary on the film festival circuit this fall, aiming to bring this untapped pizza story to the world.
Laughton wasn’t sure where the project was going but decided to trust the process.
“When I first heard about Windsor being a pizza city, I had no idea what to expect, but believe me—it lives up to the hype,” he says. “I didn’t know how popular it was down there. This was a personal story for George that became a passion project for me. I wanted this film to get people excited enough to plan a road-trip to Windsor to try some of the best pizza around. You can’t tell this story without establishing Windsor as a prominent character and capturing the essence of the city, and I think we did that.”
With beats from one of Toronto’s hottest up-and-coming producers, Dom Dias, the documentary features an original soundtrack that will also be released as a lo-fi hip-hop mixtape. The doc also shows love to Just John and throws in some choice Dipset references.
Dias tells Complex he knew the documentary was a great idea from the start. “Scoring this documentary was nothing but exciting! When George hit me up to work on this I knew it was going to be something special. We took it to Memphis with drum programming, early ’90s New York-inspired sample chops, cinematic chord progressions, Toronto-esque melancholy trap bangers—I mean, cohesively we really made an album that acts as a score,” he laughs.
The Pizza City You’ve Never Heard Of, self-described as “an insightful, mouth-watering examination of how the classic Windsor pizza evolved,” wants to change the narrative and include the city in North America’s pizza pantheon. If you ask the people of the border city, it’s long overdue.
Watch the trailer for the documentary above.
