 |
| The Nameless Ballad Photo: Frightfest |
Italian director Federico Zampaglione's The Nameless Ballad, co-written by Barbara Baraldi, revolves around a musician's ordeal as he completes his latest album. Pressured by his record label, things take a hellish twist when he discovers an ancient piano and long-lost diary.
Zampaglione made his feature debut with the dark comedy A Dream House Nightmare (Nero Bifamiliare), about a couple clashing with their new neighbours. His sophomore feature, Shadow, shifted his focus towards horror, with a story about a soldier and a woman who are hunted by a violent gang. He followed this with the giallo-horror Tulpa, and The Well, about an art restorer and a cursed Medieval painting.
Speaking with Eye For Film, Zampaglione discussed childhood memories, the appeal of genre cinema, the horror of modernity and the real.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Casper Borges: You started out as a musician, so what led you down the filmmaking path?
Federico Zampaglione: At one point I was interested in music videos and video clips. It was in the Nineties when video clips were important for a singer or a band's identity. So, I started getting involved in finding the right ideas and, little by little, I began directing them myself.
After one of my video clips received an award in 2005, a friend of mine who was a producer asked why I hadn't made a movie. He said: "Visually, you have a lot of ideas, and you have a little bit of experience making video clips. Why don't you try to tell a cinematic story?" That idea was attractive because a video clip is a lot of work, and in two days it's all over. So, I always felt a little frustrated, because I wanted to continue enjoying the process. And so, in 2007, I made my début feature with the dark comedy Nero Bifamiliare.
I enjoyed exploring the dark side of the story instead of the more funny and comedic side. I knew then if I was going to make another movie it needed to be a horror film. And my next film was the atmospheric and even a little disturbing horror film Shadow, which premièred at FrightFest in London. So, that was my first experience of horror.
CB: Can you remember when you first became intrigued by horror?
FZ: Horror is a primal emotion we experience in life. And fear is there since we're very little. I remember when I was age five or six, my dad took me to an amusement park in Rome. And this amusement park was very peculiar because it had a big huge dragon ride where you went into the dragon's wide open mouth. And once inside, it was a gory haunted house or ghost train. And I still remember the feeling of being terrified when we got off that ride, but at the same time, I was excited. From that moment on, I was a horror fan.
CB: What was the genesis of the idea for The Nameless Ballad?
FZ: I've been a musician for the past 35 years, so I know this world well, whether it be the music industry or the struggle of dealing with a creativity mentality, and even yourself.
After you become successful, your life completely shifts just because you are famous and people love your music. When you start living that life, and you experience the difference, that's the moment when fear sets in. It's then that you start thinking about what happens if all this disappears? You are scared because the lifestyle and all of its satisfactions are riding on your shoulders.
I was also thinking about how you see a lot of young people on shows like The X Factor or going viral on social media. It's very easy now for a musician in this new era to become successful. Sometimes, it even happens overnight because someone puts a song on TikTok and all of a sudden that person is a superstar. And I know a lot of young people that went through that, and you can see the struggle and the pain.
Thinking about that, I said: "Today is completely crazy and being a musician is dangerous." At that point, I questioned why not do a film about this, because it fits into horror and it's scary. So, I started writing the first part of the story, and then I connected with Barbara Baraldi, who is a writer and curator of Dylan Dog, which is a legendary horror comic here in Italy, to finish the screenplay.
CB: Watching Robert Wise's The Haunting, one of the interesting things is whether it's the house or the people that are haunted. I raise this because the house in The Nameless Ballad is more than just a stage for horror.
FZ: I tried to build a haunting and creepy atmosphere in general, from the furniture to the characters to the place. And I tried to make it a little different, because generally, haunted houses are very old and dark, and a little bit washed out. In this case, I wanted to use the creepiness of modernity and the sense of loneliness, because this guy, apart from his dog, is all alone.
Also, in this film, the ghost has a story behind her, which is a little different from the usual witch or whatever it might be. I was referring to a certain kind of behaviour from Italian culture of the past, like the treatment of women, which gives it a realism. Then there's a trauma, but a real one rather than going supernatural, which would be over the top. So, it's something real that turns into something creepy and supernatural.
My previous film, The Well, was more of a fun movie with less backstory. It was very gory and spectacular at times with practical effects, but I didn't want to keep going that route.
If you talk about mental health, for example, people feel those films are more credible. And they are more scared at the same time because they know this can happen. Whereas a monster, a presence or whatever it is, will never happen. When you put certain elements from real life and real problems, people start identifying themselves within those.
CB: Films are made to be shared with an audience and on that note, is there a particular response you will be hoping for from the audience?
FZ: I would love the audience to be captivated by the atmosphere of the film. I didn't want to use too many jump scares or tricks because I'd rather create a more consistently creepy atmosphere that becomes creepier as the film progresses. So, I would love to see the audience immersed more than jumping, yelling or laughing that they sometimes do. Attending horror festivals, you'll sometimes have the impression you are on a roller coaster because of the yelling etc. I've gone for something different.
The Nameless Ballad has its world première at the 2026 edition of London FrightFest.
