Waking Hours (2025)

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.