Berlin-based Italian director-producer Carmen Trocker brings her pensive first feature, Personale [+lire aussi :
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interview : Carmen Trocker
fiche film], to IDFA’s Luminous strand, taking a “behind the scenes” look at the housekeeping work at a high-end hotel in the Italian Dolomites. In our interview, she speaks about the importance of bringing to the screen the dynamics of this unlikely community, many of whom are migrants from disparate places, connected by the work they must do.

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Cineuropa: What first brought you to this hotel – or this particular setting – and this incredible group of staff working there?
Carmen Trocker: I grew up in the area. So, I was raised amidst developing tourism, and then I moved away from this mountain village [to Berlin]. This was at the beginning of the 1990s, when the infrastructure had become bigger. There weren’t enough people from [that place] to work, and there was a huge influx of people coming to Europe in search of a job. When I came back to the village to visit, I met these new people. That's not the life they wanted to live, but they were forced to come to work. […] [Those who] live or work in these villages, who work in tourism, seem to vanish.

It's always interesting to talk about something from the other side. It was fascinating to talk about tourism from this invisible part [of the unseen workers]. For me, it’s the best way to talk about the expectations that tourists have and the workers who make it possible. We are all human, and migrant work [can be] so similar in its invisibility. […] We had the good fortune to find this hotel and also the governess – in hotel housekeeping, there is a governess who is the head of the team. She felt that we were interested in the workers and in the people. She felt that [the film was] important because virtually nobody is interested in their lives outside of [what they accomplish as housekeepers].

Through the film, we are witnesses to this unacknowledged labour in a new light. You use a lot of long shots and wide shots of the staff at work to capture this. What was your approach to this visual style?
It’s like a running washing machine that nobody's stopping for you. You have to fit in [to the environment], and it’s not a docusoap. We are not running behind them. It wouldn’t have been possible, and it wouldn’t have been interesting. So, we began to think about gestures, hands and movements, as part of the close-up shots. From the beginning, we were interested in a film language that could tell us something about their reality. When you see the gestures and the hands working, they are also talking a lot [through this]. You see the tenderness, and you see the [strength]. You see the heart of the work. That was one part, and the other part was like choreography and involved circles, because it's like the work is circular. Every day, it began, then it ended, then it began, then it ended. The sheets were dirty, then they were washed, then they were dirty again. All of the movements by this swarm of workers are choreographies.

Many of the conversations are relatable, from petty arguments to more serious ones. Were there any particular dynamics or conversations that surprised you during the shooting process?
No, because it’s a very universal kind of group dynamic. You witness it from nursery up until an old people’s home. It’s [a group of] really different characters. But what was really nice was that they are a working group put together by accident. One comes from Ivory Coast, one from Mali, one from Romania, one from Ukraine, one from Serbia. They had different lives and different chances of clicking with each other. It was very nice how they managed to meet each other for the first time as humans. They share this workplace; they share the pressure. They have to collaborate.

The sound in particular has so much texture, which makes the work come to life. What was the idea behind the sonic landscape?
I'm happy to hear that because, for me, sound is so important. It's a way of narrating. I was strongly attracted by this combination of movement and sounds, the “pssht-pssht” [spray bottle sound] and “pfft-pfft” [sweeping sound]. You could even make a musical piece from all of these washing-machine sounds. It was a very [high-concept] idea, but it was very difficult to [capture] it. And Nora Czamler, our sound woman, did some great work, but it was really difficult to isolate all of these sounds. It was important for me to use the sounds to talk about the work because music is often okay, but it's so easy to romanticise with it.