Watching someone identify cheese blindfolded should have the emotional temperature of a grocery run. Sara Joe Wolansky somehow turns it into sport. The Big Cheese tracks a group of American cheesemongers preparing for the 2023 Mondial du Fromage in Tours, France, where contestants face written tests, oral presentations, blind tastings, precision cutting, and cheese-plate construction. No American has won the competition, giving Wolansky an easy underdog framework. The cash prize, roughly $2,900, barely explains the intensity. Recognition does.
That distinction matters because American cheesemongering is still fighting an image problem. European competitors arrive from cultures where the profession carries established prestige. The Americans come from a country where the phrase “American cheese” can still conjure individually wrapped orange slices. Wolansky gets plenty of humor from that imbalance without treating her subjects as curiosities.
Her countdown structure resembles Top Chef or Project Runway, complete with qualification, preparation, personal setbacks, and the inevitable trip to the big event. The machinery is familiar. The people inside it are anything but.
Mr. Moo’s Second Life
Adam Jay Moskowitz would probably overpower a quieter documentary. He wears a cow onesie, calls himself Mr. Moo, runs the Cheesemonger Invitational, and brings an almost punk-show intensity to a profession usually associated with tasteful wooden boards. Archival footage of his early competitions feels loud, sweaty, chaotic. Wolansky wisely leaves that energy intact rather than polishing him into an inspirational-documentary mascot.
His history changes how those scenes feel. Moskowitz came from a family heavily involved in importing cheese into the United States, resisted the business, made and lost money in tech, tried rapping, then returned to cheese. His later struggle with substance abuse brings the film into far darker territory. He recalls his son being frightened of him and describes a suicidal crisis interrupted by his wife Jessica, who reminded him of the family he would leave behind.
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The competition gradually becomes inseparable from that recovery. Coaching Team USA gives his obsession direction. Watch how quickly his clownish public persona drops when Courtney Johnson or Sam Rollins struggles. His voice changes, his attention narrows, and the guy in the cow costume suddenly feels like someone terrified of watching another person waste a chance he nearly wasted himself. That emotional movement is where Wolansky finds her strongest material.
The Olympics of Cheese
Courtney and Sam give the Mondial two very different kinds of pressure. Courtney approaches cheesemongering with an academic intensity. She researches relentlessly, travels to Sweden as part of her preparation, and hopes to build a business of her own while facing difficulty securing financing. Every tasting exercise carries a professional question beneath it: can expertise become a sustainable life?
Sam arrives with less confidence from the people around him. His inclusion prompts doubts about his experience, including from Moskowitz. Wolansky gives those doubts extra weight by showing what Sam has already lost. His family’s restaurant was destroyed in a 2020 wildfire, and his mother describes that place as home. The Mondial cannot replace it. His attempt to prove himself still feels connected to rebuilding something.
The competition itself is wonderfully strange television-ready material. Contestants must recognize flavors blind, speak intelligently about individual cheeses such as Roquefort, cut with precision, and construct presentations under scrutiny. Wolansky edits these tasks for suspense without pretending that someone’s life depends on a wedge of dairy. A hesitation during identification or a mistake in presentation becomes tense because the film has already shown how much work led to those seconds.
I wanted longer with the wider Cheesemonger Invitational field, including figures such as Kyra, who discusses possibly being the first Black American cheesemonger. Wolansky finds interesting people and then narrows her attention very quickly. You can feel the larger documentary waiting somewhere offscreen.
What the Trophy Cannot Measure
Wolansky rarely experiments with documentary form. Interviews establish history, archival material fills in Moskowitz’s past, training sequences build momentum, and the countdown toward France supplies the spine. That familiarity occasionally limits the film. America’s attempt to establish its own cheese culture against centuries of European tradition deserves deeper examination than it receives here. Yet the conventional form gives the personalities room to carry the experience.
Courtney studying abroad, Sam trying to justify his place on the team, and Moskowitz bouncing between anxious coach and exuberant showman create the feelings that the competition structure needs. The documentary becomes especially good at showing how expertise can look ridiculous from outside and deeply meaningful from within. A blind tasting is a party trick until someone’s career depends on recognizing what is in their mouth.
That shift in perspective is The Big Cheese at its warmest. These people practice, study, fail, recover, and keep showing up for a profession many viewers may never have considered a profession at all. Wolansky makes their devotion legible through the work itself: the research trip, the careful cuts, the repeated tastings, the nervous seconds before an answer. By the time Team USA reaches France, cheese has stopped being the joke. The nerves are real.
The Big Cheese premiered at DOC NYC on November 13, 2025, and expanded to theatrical screenings in August 2026. The documentary follows an underdog team of American cheesemongers competing for first place at France’s Mondial du Fromage.
Full Credits
Title: The Big Cheese
Distributor: IFC Center
Release date: November 13, 2025 (DOC NYC)
Running time: 87 minutes
Director: Sara Joe Wolansky
Producers and Executive Producers: James A. Smith, Sara Joe Wolansky
Cast: Courtney Johnson, Adam Moskowitz, Sam Rollins, Lilith Spencer
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Gareth Smit
Editors: Nick Weiss-Richmond
Composer: Jacques Brautbar
The Review
The Big Cheese
The Big Cheese turns blind tastings, cheese plates, and a trip to Tours into something unexpectedly affecting because Sara Joe Wolansky keeps returning to the people who need the competition to mean something. Courtney Johnson’s professional ambition, Sam Rollins’ recovery after his family lost their restaurant, and Adam Moskowitz’s transformation from chaos toward mentorship give the Mondial stakes far beyond its modest prize. The familiar competition structure occasionally limits the documentary’s curiosity about American cheese culture, yet the warmth of this community carries it.
PROS
- Exceptionally likable subjects
- Moskowitz’s emotional personal story
- Tense Mondial competition sequences
- Courtney and Sam’s strong arcs
- Genuine sense of community
CONS
- Familiar competition-documentary structure
- American cheese history feels underexplored
- Supporting contestants disappear too quickly
