“A Form of Primal Theater”: Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini on their Venice-debuting Waking Hours

Waking Hours is the auspicious, Venice-premiering feature debut of cinematic collaborators Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini, graduates of the Experimental Center of Cinematography in Palermo. With Cammarata handling camerawork, Foscarini on sound, the duo have been working as a two-man team since their 2020 award-winning, mid-length doc Tardo Agosto. And their less-is-more approach shows (and then some). The film stems from the simplest of premises: a group of Afghan smugglers who’ve set up camp along the border between Serbia, Croatia and Hungary spend their nights smoking and chatting by the fire (the only source of light) when not discussing prices and working out operational details over the phone. Shot from a respectful distance in near-total darkness, and with the ambient sounds of the forest serving as soundtrack, the doc forces us to adjust our eyes in order to see the shapes emerging from the blackness onscreen; and to witness a nocturnal existence in which time is suspended, the hushed tedium punctuated only by distant gunshots. In other words, to look and listen differently. Just prior to Waking Hours’s Critics’ Week debut (September 4th), Filmmaker reached out to the co-directors to learn all about crafting a doc that “proposes a poetic and civic counter-investigation, not seeking culprits but creating listening.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.