01
The Long Silence
A sound recordist begins losing his hearing the week he inherits his father's tape archive.
OFFICIAL SELECTION
LUMEN FESTIVAL 2024
A production company, est. Rotterdam / Los Angeles
UMBRA
Most cameras are pointed at the light.
Ours are pointed at what the light is hiding.
02 — Selected work
Five pictures.
No apologies.
02
Vermilion
Two restorers uncover a pigment beneath a ruined fresco that, by every record, should not exist.
GRAND PRIX
FESTIVAL DE MINUIT 2023
03
Saltworks
Three winters with the last hand-harvesters of the Atlantic salt pans, shot at the speed of tide.
BEST DOCUMENTARY
NORDLICHT DOKFEST 2022
04
Night Bus to Anhalter
A night route through Berlin keeps picking up the same passenger at every stop. Nobody else notices.
OFFICIAL SELECTION
KINO OSTRA 2021
05
The Cartographer's Daughter
A girl redraws, from memory, the map of a village that refuses to appear on any other.
JURY PRIZE
CÔTE NOIRE SHORTS 2019
03 — From the director
Everyone can light a face. The whole industry is very good at it. We became a company because we wanted to photograph the two seconds before the light arrives — the doorway, the held breath, the passenger you keep almost seeing. Suspense is not a genre. It is the honest name for attention.
So we shoot on film, we keep the blacks black, and we cut on action. If a frame survives with half of it unseen, it was composed correctly.
— Lena Marchetti, founder & director
04 — What we shoot
Three ways
into the dark.
INT. — SET-UP A
Commercials
Thirty seconds is a feature with the fat cut off. We bring feature craft — real locations, real glass, real dark — to brands that would rather be remembered than explained.
Full service, boards to broadcast · 2–6 week turnaround
EXT. — SET-UP B
Features
Development through delivery. We co-produce two pictures a year, never more, and we stay in the edit until the cut stops flinching. Directors keep final say; we keep the schedule honest.
Two slots per year · co-production & line production
EXT. — SET-UP C
Documentary
We wait. That is the entire method. Small crews, long lenses, longer patience — until the subject forgets the camera and the film starts telling the truth by itself.
Longitudinal projects · archive & restoration grading
05 — Roll sound
Tell us what
keeps you up.
One producer reads everything sent here. If the idea has a pulse, we reply within 48 hours. We shoot — we don't ghost.
Allergic to forms? production@umbra-films.example
Rotterdam · Los Angeles · wherever the light is wrong in the right way