Exclusive interview: Federico Zampaglione on ‘The Nameless Ballad’

For Federico Zampaglione, returning to Tubi FrightFest is more than another stop on the festival circuit. The Italian filmmaker and musician traces a significant part of his horror career back to the festival, and when his latest film The Nameless Ballad receives its World Premiere on the main screen on Saturday 29th August, he will be bringing perhaps his most personal horror story yet.

The film follows a young musician who retreats to an isolated Italian villa while struggling to produce his next album. An ancient piano and forgotten diary offer inspiration of a decidedly dangerous kind, drawing him into supernatural visions, obsession and an increasingly uncertain relationship with reality.

Zampaglione first brought Shadow to FrightFest in 2009, beginning an association that has continued through films including Tulpa: Demon of Desire and The Well. Seventeen years later, the prospect of unveiling another film to the festival crowd hasn’t become any less daunting.

“Going back to FrightFest is just like going where everything started,” he says. “So I feel very emotional. I’m feeling a little tense, if I have to be honest, because it’s always a big deal.”

This time there is the small matter of the scheduling too. The Nameless Ballad has landed the 9pm Saturday slot on the main screen. “I think a lot of people are going to watch this film,” he acknowledges.

Those expecting Zampaglione to simply repeat the gruesome excesses of The Well may be in for a surprise. His previous film earned plenty of attention for its practical gore, and following it with another blood-soaked horror movie would have been an understandable move.

“A lot of people liked The Well because The Well was a very good movie,” he says. “So if I wanted to be on the safe side, not risking anything, I should have done another gory movie. Why not The Well 2?”

The answer is characteristically straightforward. “It’s not me, man. I always try to be myself and not chasing the audience, not chasing success.”

Instead, The Nameless Ballad moves Zampaglione into supernatural territory, trading some of the viscera for ghosts, strange presences and psychological unease.

He developed the screenplay with writer Barbara Baraldi, whose sensibilities apparently proved an excellent fit for where he wanted to take the story. “She’s so dark,” he laughs. “She’s real dark.”

“We really wanted to deliver a spooky and dark and tense film this time. Less gory, for sure,” he explains. Surprisingly, given the territory his horror career has already covered, it also represents a first. “This is the first time I was dealing with ghosts and presences.”

The change of direction doesn’t mean Zampaglione has suddenly developed an appetite for digital effects. Quite the opposite.

“I’m not the biggest fan of CGI. I have to be honest with you,” he says. “I don’t like to see CGI on screen. I would rather use 100 times practical effects. They will look way more real.”

For him, the attraction isn’t limited to what eventually appears on screen. There is something unpredictable about creating an effect physically while cameras are rolling.

“The practical effect is thrilling,” he says. “You are there praying.”

If The Well provides one obvious point of comparison with Zampaglione’s latest film, his other career provides another. The creative crisis facing the central character of The Nameless Ballad is something its director understands particularly well after 35 years of writing, recording and performing music.

Success, he explains, can make whatever comes next considerably harder. “You start comparing the new song with the old ones and say, ‘Oh, how can I?’ And they are not good enough, never good enough, because the other songs were successful.”

It made the idea of a musician under pressure especially fertile ground for a horror film.

“At this point of my life, I really wanted to talk a little bit, maybe even to put together the horror and my music career,” he says. “It’s 35 years I’m doing records with record companies, playing gigs. So I know a lot of that. Why not trying to tell a story about a musician?”

Music consequently became part of the fabric of The Nameless Ballad. Zampaglione composed its central piano piece before filming and describes it as “just like a character”, using the music to establish the unsettling atmosphere he wanted his actors to inhabit.

Finding the right performer to play the film’s musician presented another problem. Zampaglione knew immediately that pretending to play an instrument wouldn’t cut it.

“To me, as a musician, I can tell in one second on the spot if you are a real musician, a real thing or not,” he says. “You see a guy embracing a guitar, touching an instrument, and you already know it’s fake.”

Jamie Ward ultimately proved he could do both jobs. “I have found in Jamie Ward an amazing actor and performer,” Zampaglione says.

The payoff is more than visual authenticity. “All the music scenes in the film are for real. He was playing for real. And what you hear in the film is live, absolutely live.”

Yet Zampaglione doesn’t want those technical and supernatural elements to come at the expense of character. For all its ghosts and visions, The Nameless Ballad takes time to establish the people at the centre of the nightmare. His reasoning is wonderfully uncomplicated.

“If you put the guy or the girl, whatever it is, in danger and you feel something for the character, that’s the moment where you know you’re going to feel bad,” he says. “Otherwise it’s just, okay, they’re going to kill him. Who cares?”

There is also a strand of reality beneath the haunting. Without giving away the film’s secrets, Zampaglione points towards the restrictive lives imposed upon women in earlier generations, particularly in southern Italy, as part of its foundation.

“It was the time where women had to take care of family, husband and kids and that’s it. Nothing apart from that,” he explains. “So you have a little bit of reality jumping to the supernatural to give more vibe and more sense of credibility.”

All of which makes The Nameless Ballad an intriguing FrightFest proposition. Zampaglione could have followed The Well with something familiar. Instead, he’s arriving with a more personal supernatural film about artistic obsession, creative pressure and the consequences of chasing inspiration into some very dark places.

“I’d rather go to bed and feel honest with myself,” he says. “That was the story that I wanted to tell. Maybe it’s very different. Maybe some people can be disappointed, but I feel like I did something good for me.”

Soon, he’ll find out what the FrightFest audience thinks. Despite years spent performing music in front of crowds, Zampaglione says watching one of his films with an audience is altogether more nerve-racking. At a concert, he can react. In a cinema, there is nowhere to hide.

“When it comes to movies, you just sit there,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Not that the nerves are keeping him away.

“Yeah, man, I can’t wait to be there.”

The Nameless Ballad receives its World Premiere at Tubi FrightFest on Saturday 29 August at 9pm at the ODEON Leicester Square. For tickets, visit: frightfest.co.uk/

Watch the full interview below.

The Nameless Ballad Interview | Federico Zampaglione on Music, Ghosts & FrightFest

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