Venice 2025: Waking Hours | Interview with Federico Cammarata & Filippo Foscarini
“We wanted to transmit, at least partially, the experience of being lost in a forest in which at night you cannot sleep,” the Italian co-directors told us as Waking Hours premieres in Venice.
When two Italian directors set out to capture the fleeting beauty of mayflies along the Tisza River in northern Serbia, they could not have imagined that their cameras would soon turn toward the hidden lives of people surviving in the forests on the margins of Europe. We were lucky to speak with Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini about how a natural phenomenon led them to confront the realities of migration, smuggling, and resilience along the Balkan Route. What follows is a conversation about chance encounters, uncomfortable truths, and the quiet humanity found in the darkest of places. Their debut feature, Waking Hours, premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, at the Settimana Internazionale della Critica.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Let’s start at the start! How do two Italian directors end up in a small place in Serbia on a project? You visited the North of Serbia to film Tisza river bloom. What drew you to that?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: In recent years, we’ve started to develop a kind of discipline of error: we know where to start, but we can’t predict the outcome.
The reason why we were in Vojvodina is because we were interested in filming mayflies, an endangered insect that, until not long ago, used to thrive in riverbeds throughout various parts of the Balkans, and which today can be found almost exclusively in the Tisza River.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Looking for the best place to frame this natural phenomenon, you accidentally met people living in the forest. How did you build rapport and manage to convince these strangers living on the margins of law to become your protagonists?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: The first time we met a group of people inside the forest was by chance: they lived in a semi-permanent way near the river.
Then, thanks to an NGO, we met the protagonists of the film. Initially we were more focused on filming only the spaces of their camps. However, through a mutual curiosity, a bond was formed with them through small daily gestures: having dinner together, listening to music, stealing cherries, chatting. At that point, we began filming what would later appear in the film.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Would you say that as documentary film graduates from the University of Sicily the topic of refugees was relevant to you? Considering the refugees that arrive and are in reception centres there?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: Absolutely. Living for a long time in Sicily, along the coasts of the Mediterranean Route, has definitely influenced us. We are not obsessed with the topic, but migration ends up being a constant theme in our research and in our life, even unintentionally.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: You’ve mentioned before that it felt that many layers of law and society were involved in this human cross-border trade. Yet, many of us are completely unaware of these things happening under our noses. Are we right to look away and let everyone go on with the life that they are leading or do we have a responsibility to do something… And what is that something?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: It’s a question that makes one uncomfortable.
Smuggling is a highly controversial issue. Earlier, you asked us about Sicily, where the problem of human traffickers is frequently subject to political and media manipulation. Pretending that the phenomenon doesn’t exist is like burying our heads in the sand.
In the words of our protagonists, we found a mirror that talks far more about us, Europeans, than it does about the migrants themselves.
Finding solutions that don’t cause internal divisions within Europe, or even within individual states, is incredibly challenging. What is clear, however, is that a repressive system is in place, one marked by invisible violence. This dynamic also influences smuggling activities: the more intense the repression, the more brutal the violence employed by smugglers.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: In your filming, you realised that it can take 10,000 € or more to make the passage to the Schengen area. Does that mean that the people who cross aren’t as destitute as we might think? And if they are not, what desperation is making them take this route?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: The reasons why a person or a family invests their money to leave depend on the case. What is striking, however, is that for many of these people, it’s a journey towards death. It’s not just an investment of money; it’s an investment of their own life.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: You filmed during the dark because, as you say, the forest is scarier in the dark but to the smugglers it is actually safer then. How did you feel in the forest? Can you imagine living such a life without the privilege of going home?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: We discovered in the darkness and the forest a way to both embody and express our experience, while also creating a dark veil that shielded the protagonists of the film.
The Blank Screen is also a reflection on the impossibility of penetrating a reality that stands before you, a space that can only be filled with imagination.
We cannot erase our privilege; however, within the forests, we had no official permission to be there, and we, too, were exposed to significant risk from the border police.
From the perspective of our protagonists, there was never any trace of envy or subjugation toward us simply because we were Europeans: as long as they lived in the forests, they were completely self-sufficient and did not need any kind of support from us.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Do you believe that at least some of the people attempting a crossing to Europe have a chance of improving their life here?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: Naturally many succeed at the end, luckily. What is certain though is that the journey it’s extremely dangerous and often the cause of great sorrows that mark people deeply in their bodies and souls. The Balkan Route, it’s a question of money and fate. If you have the budget and the luck you’ll get to your destination in a few days. If you are not lucky you get stuck in a limbo that can last many years. Imagine leaving your home in Afghanistan at 23 years old and finally getting, for example, to Trieste in Italy, now thirty-years-old. There are many stories like that.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Many of the scenes in the film are dots of light moving over complete darkness. There is very little talk and dialogue. What mood did you want to convey with this artistic choice?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: We wanted to transmit, at least partially, the experience of being lost in a forest in which at night you cannot sleep. The only sources of light that we relied on are the ones that are actually used by the protagonists: torches, the flashlight of the phones, the fire.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: My most memorable scene in the film was making and baking bread in the forest. It is also one of the rare scenes that is somewhat lit. What was the significance of showing the smugglers making food?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: To cook one’s own food it’s an ancestral daily routine and it was their main activity when it began to get dark. For us, the act of cooking became a sort of “narrative engine” both in the relationship with them and also generating many of the dialogues we captured that are in the film. It’s by gathering around fire and cooking that stories are born.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: How do you move on from a project like this knowing there are people like the ones you met in many places in the world and that they have very little chance of leading a normal life?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: The experience of making this film at least gave us a comprehension of the phenomenon a bit more visceral and direct and less cerebral because we have been there with our bodies.
But then, how do we all move on every day being aware of the sufferings of others? We don’t have any answer for that.
Ramona Boban-Vlahović: As documentarians, what are some themes that you might explore in the future? Both your short feature Tardo Agosto and how you ended up filming Waking Hours have a connection with nature. Is this a theme that we will see in your future work?
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini: We don’t start with themes in mind but rather with something specific that captures our attention, aware that reality (and so nature) needs to be pandered to and we can row against it only up to a certain point.
We’ll leave again in pursuit of something, to then perhaps find something else at the end. For us this is also a way of living.
Our team is on the ground in Italy to cover the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, running from 27 August to 6 September 2025.
