Waking Hours
Asian Premiere
Federico Cammarata, Filippo Foscarini Italy 2025 78 min PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
This nocturnal, immersive film offers glimpses of the daily routines of a group of migrant smugglers living on the Balkan border.
At the forested borders of Serbia and Hungary, human smugglers and migrants wait to cross into Europe. Shooting entirely by night with minimal equipment to avoid police, the filmmakers document an Afghan group living in tents, cooking and arranging passages. As darkness alternates with the flickers of campfires, torches and mobile phone screens, obscurity becomes both a cinematic technique and a metaphor for their covert activities.
Fragmentary conversations reveal the smugglers’ personal stories, hinting at the complex ties between migrants, smugglers and border authorities in their countries of origin, transit and destination. Rare in its focus on the smugglers’ perspectives, the film compels us to look closely at the shadowy realities behind their survival strategies.
Synopsis Writer: Sam I-shan
Q&A with Filmmaker(s)
3 Dec, Wed 7:00PM / 78 min
Oldham Theatre
AT THE FEST!
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Waking Hours
Federico Cammarata, Filippo Foscarini
Italy
2025
Pashtu, Farsi, Dari
78 min
PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
Asian Premiere
Federico Cammarata, Filippo Foscarini
Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini have collaborated since meeting at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Palermo, making personal, fieldwork-based documentaries. Their work Late August (2021) has been screened at Doclisboa and Yamagata, among others. Waking Hours premiered in competition at the Venice Critics’ Week.
Stefano Centini,
Serena Alfieri,
Federico Cammarata,
Filippo Foscarini,
Roberto Minervini,
Dario Zonta
