When José Andrés first came to D.C. in the ‘90s, few knew that the Spanish-born chef would be such a force of nature — not just in the local food scene, but in the world. We Feed People, a new National Geographic Films documentary from veteran filmmaker Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind), offers a profile of the boisterous restaurateur, depicting him as not just a dedicated humanitarian but as a cigar-chomping, larger-than-life adventurer.

For all his media savvy, the film introduces Andrés, on the scene of some natural disaster, as somebody indifferent to the attention, when he impatiently brushes off a reporter asking for his name.

His workload is indeed demanding. Andrés cuts an operatic figure, ambitious enough to take on what seems like an impossible task, like feeding half a million people in Puerto Rico devastated by Hurricane Maria; or, as he’s been doing more recently — this isn’t covered in the film — getting food to Ukraine residents under siege at home or in refugee camps in Romania and Slovakia.

Andrés sees his work not just as a job, but as a vocation: “I love the word ‘cook’… for me it’s very romantic: a cocinero is person who is there on the stove with the fire … feeling the fire!”

Earlier in his career, that vocation meant introducing the region to Spanish classics at his flagship Jaleo, or to molecular gastronomy at the now two-Michelin-starred minibar. Now, Andrés also feels that fire whenever he runs to places in need. He was inspired by DC Central Kitchen, which was founded by Robert Egger in 1989 to distribute leftover food to at-risk individuals and provide job training for those experiencing homelessness. With that model in mind, Andrés founded World Central Kitchen in 2010, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing food to people in areas devastated by natural disasters.

“I am good at seeing opportunity where others see mayhem,” Andrés says in the film.

That mayhem can be humbling. The chef recounts a mission in Haiti, when women helping him prepare beans told him that his method for cooking them differed from the way they would traditionally do it.  Sure, he has more than a dozen restaurants in America — he’s Jose Andrés! — but after that exchange, wherever he provides aid, he makes sure he cooks what locals want, he says.

While Andrés is the focus of We Feed People, much time is spent on World Central Kitchen staff, from CEO Nate Mook to a retiree who doesn’t want to just stay home watching disasters on the news, to another volunteer who delivers food to people in the Bahamas with a hug.

That Bahamas scene was from a mission undertaken before the pandemic changed everything, but Andrés hasn’t let that slow him down; the film also shows him bringing food to parts of The Navajo Nation hard-hit by the coronavirus.

Although Andrés can come off like a workaholic savior, We Feed People doesn’t canonize its subject. There’s a downside: dad cooks, but mom feeds the family. Andrés’ daughter Ines apologizes in advance to friends in case her unpredictable dad says something embarrassing, and when fans who see him at the Dupont farmer’s market want him to pose for pictures, she’s annoyed his attention is always somewhere else.

He also has a temper. In one scene, frustrated when a worker hands a woman a sandwich out of line — he doesn’t want to cause a rush — Andrés explodes at the staff member. He quickly apologizes, not only to his staff but to the hungry woman.

For Andrés, it’s important that he isn’t just giving handouts. Instead, he tries to help people help themselves,in one case by installing a new industrial-sized kitchen in a Guatemalan village so residents can take over after WCK moves on.

Director Ron Howard is best known for fiction features such as Splash and Solo: A Star Wars Story, and his documentaries have involved such high-profile subjects as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in Beatles documentary Eight Days a Week. He’s also been drawn to exploring natural disasters, including his last documentary, Rebuilding Paradise (2020), which followed a California town trying to recover from catastrophic wildfires in 2018.

While We Feed People is populated with plenty of talking head interviews, Howard largely builds this profile by simply following Andrés at work, whether planning logistics in a makeshift conference room or going out on the road, whether that means embedding the camera in a riverboat, a helicopter, or a truck that unexpectedly runs out of gas. This is one of the few times the chef is left speechless, but in the end, there’s always some small comfort: a big cigar.

We Feed People screens at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery on April 28, with Jose Andrés and Ron Howard in attendance, and at National Geographic on April 29 and for World Central Kitchen donors. The film will be available on Disney+ on May 27.