Interview by Martina Cocco CCS, Stefano De Pieri CCS, and Corrado Serri CCS
Alessandro, tell us about your background and how you came to make this feature film.
A: My story isn’t one of the most romantic, but it’s probably the most common way to get something made in Europe today. After my first cinematic experiments shot in my hometown of Modena with friends and family, I moved to Rome and, after learning how to secure funding for a short film, I won a government grant. That’s how Looped Love, my first short film, came to life.
It was that short film that first took you to China…
A: Exactly. After finishing university, I went to China to present the film, and once there I thought it would be a great idea to shoot another one – but in a completely different way. We didn’t exactly shoot it legally. I worked with a DoP from Barcelona, Pepe Gay, whom I met at Rome airport just before leaving. Thanks to Unica, I began to reflect on new ways of making films, without necessarily relying on public grants, government funding, or media financing. I started thinking that my debut could happen through a completely independent approach. That’s how Non credo in niente was born, and it was on that occasion that I met Kacper Zieba.
Kacper, can you tell us about your background?
K: I grew up in a very small village near Częstochowa, which itself isn’t a particularly big city in Poland. With some friends, we started by shooting videos just for fun, back when YouTube had only just appeared. In high school, I became passionate about still photography. I was very lucky to meet some older photographers at a simple local photo club, and I learned a great deal from them about composition. After high school, I passed the entrance exam for Poland’s top photography school, the National Film School in Łódź, where a very important tradition is upheld: during the first two years, you can shoot only on film. Even today, despite digital being widely used, students spend their first years shooting exclusively on film – black and white on 35mm in the first year, and colour in the second.
At the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia too, especially when Maestro Rotunno was there, great importance was placed on shooting on film.
A: I met Kacper through a mutual friend, Martina Cavazzana, who is both an actress and a co-producer of the film. Martina had met Kacper ten or more years earlier at a small film festival in southern Italy. In 2020, I was looking for a new cinematographer for a small project to be shot on Super 8 – a sort of intro for my production company, Flickmates, to be used at the beginning of our films. Martina mentioned him to me, so we had a very quick video call, but the energy between us was immediately perfect. About two weeks later he came to Rome and we shot that small project, which was mainly an opportunity to get to know each other better. After that experience in Rome, I went to Warsaw to spend some time with him. We went to a lake and spent a week talking about cinema, watching each other’s short films, and also watching together some films that are important to our shared vision of cinema.
A wonderful way to get to know each other…
A: Yes, that week in August immediately created a wonderful connection. A month later we were already in Rome preparing to shoot the first part of Non credo in niente, which we filmed in three separate stages over the course of eight months. I want to stress that we really made the film together. He wasn’t just the cinematographer in the traditional sense. He also influenced the screenplay and has an incredible eye for the actors’ performances – he can tell when a scene works or when an actor needs a different kind of support to give their best. We worked together on everything: lighting, actors, locations, costumes. There was no strict division of roles between director and cinematographer; every decision was shared. And, above all, we had fun.
So, how did you prepare for the film? It sounds like there was a lot of improvisation involved.
K: Alessandro wrote the screenplay in a single night in a hotel while we were sharing the same room. He already had everything in his head – he just needed to put it down on paper. We made our decisions directly on set, after rehearsals. It’s impossible to imagine everything beforehand, without being on location and without the actors. Only when we were all together in the same place could we start thinking about how to shoot. I really appreciate this way of working – even without a detailed script, just with a basic setup to start from and then creating directly on set. For me, it’s a much more authentic method. On set we also had many limitations, which in the end turned out to be an advantage for the film. If we didn’t have enough time to shoot a scene from multiple angles, we decided to film it in a single take, handheld. Sometimes it worked beautifully, sometimes less so – but in the end, we always had the scene.
When it came to lighting, would you rehearse first and then have time to set up the lights? And only afterwards would you shoot the shots you had decided on?
K: Yes, in a way. Usually, we started with a rough idea of the scene and its emotional tone, then during rehearsals I would observe how the actors moved and how the natural light behaved in the space. Based on that, I’d begin shaping the light straight away, adapting as we went. We didn’t have much time for long setups, so everything had to be fast and intuitive. Often we’d finish lighting and go straight into shooting without a real break in between. It was a very fluid process, driven more by instinct and by what was happening in front of us than by a strict plan.
We loved your film, of course, but we also arranged this conversation as a pretext to talk about Wong Kar Wai. We strongly felt his presence in the film, as if there were tributes or references to him. We’d like to ask both of you whether his work was a reference point.
A: Yes, absolutely. Wong Kar Wai is one of the most important directors for me – and I believe for Kacper as well, especially when it comes to Non credo in niente. I remember an interview where Wong Kar Wai said that organising a traditional production is very boring, so he chose to work in a rougher, more underground way, as he did for Chungking Express or Fallen Angels. And I completely agree with him – I’ve felt the same way. That’s why I decided to adopt a freer, more essential, faster approach and to create the film from that perspective. I think our connection with Wong Kar Wai lies mainly in the spirit in which we made the film, though of course the circumstances were very different. He was shooting in Hong Kong in the ’90s, at a time when film stock was the norm – the only way to make a film. Whereas five years ago in Italy, shooting on 16mm was a nightmare. So the conditions were different, but I think what we share with Wong Kar Wai is the belief that this approach is more romantic and, at the same time, a way to make a film on a very limited budget.
We noticed in the credits that the camera crew was mixed – both Italian and Polish.
K: The lighting crew was Italian, from Rome, and it was a fantastic collaboration. I brought the focus puller and the camera assistant from Poland, because it’s essential to have a focus puller you trust completely. They have to be excellent with film and perfectly understand the distances between the lens and the subjects.
Where did you find the cameras and the film stock? And where did you have the material developed? Was it all done…? tutto in Italia?
A: We rented the equipment from Cartocci in Rome. The film was developed at Augustus Color, who did an outstanding job. We bought the film stock from Panalight, which is the official Kodak distributor here in Italy.
K: I can add something about the technical side of processing and our choice of film stock. We wanted to capture Rome at night, but shooting on film in low light is very challenging unless you have a huge lighting truck. The only viable option was Kodak 500T, a stock designed mainly for studio and low-light situations. We decided to push the film two stops. In the end, though, I exposed it at 1000 ISO – technically 500 ISO pushed two stops, but exposed between 800 and 1000 ISO. This gave us more grain and contrast, but also greater sensitivity. Essentially, we were able to shoot as if we were using a regular digital camera with a native ISO of 800. I was a bit worried at first, but I had done some tests, and with a one-stop push the film held up well. With two stops, it still seemed to work. Then, a few months ago, Alessandro and I shot a music video and decided to push the black-and-white stock three stops. The result? Still perfect! So now, honestly, I no longer know where the limit is.
And what camera did you use?
K: We were lucky enough to shoot with the best 16mm camera available – the ARRI 416. We used Ultra 16 lenses, which are very fast, opening up to 1.3. With film, focus is absolutely crucial, so we spent a lot of time making sure all the equipment was perfectly calibrated.
How many rolls did you use per day?
A: We usually shot 3 or 4 rolls a day, but during the first few days we went up to 8.
And were you able to check the rushes?
A: Yes, roughly once every five days.
Kacper, do you often get the chance to work on film?
K: I try to do it as often as I can – I’ve bought a Super 8 camera – but even though I often end up shooting digitally these days, I always try to emulate the look of film as much as possible. Of course, it’s not the same, but with today’s techniques you can get pretty close.
As for the lighting, we really admire how bold you were in your choices. We also found the visual aspect to be very natural. The photographic approach often seemed to rely on a single light source. Could you elaborate on that?
K: Yes, for example, in the scene where Giuseppe has just had sex with the girl, he’s sitting by the window and there’s a single source of light falling on his body, with a sodium-coloured reflection on her… it looked like a painting, a Rembrandt or something like that. There was no need for anything else in that scene. For me, the imagery of Rome at night was defined by that yellow sodium light – vintage, magical, nostalgic. But that’s changing now; they’re replacing everything with LED lights, which are cooler and, to be honest, a bit uglier. In many interiors, instead, we simply reinforced the existing lights from above using Asteras.
Normally people think shooting on film is expensive and unsuitable for an independent production, but you’ve proved the opposite…
K: It’s risky for young directors and young cinematographers, because if you don’t fully understand things like focus or exposure, you can easily ruin the material and waste money. So experience is essential: if you’re a young director, you need an experienced cinematographer; or if you’re a young cinematographer without much experience, you need a skilled focus puller.
A: Today it’s difficult, especially for young people, to find friends who still know how to handle film – that’s the real problem. But it’s not more expensive, because in the year it came out, our film was actually the cheapest debut feature. Recently, The Brutalist, which was shot in VistaVision 35mm, cost less than 10 million. And in Italy we produce plenty of films that cost over 10 million and are shot digitally. It all depends on how you choose to allocate your budget. The crew’s attitude is also different. When I shoot digitally, the set feels more chaotic, because there’s this illusion that it’s free and endless. But that’s not true – hard drives are very expensive, and above all, time is wasted, which is the most valuable thing during production. The visual style and even the directorial approach are completely different.
Thanks.
