About us

SMK Factory

SMK Factory is an independent audiovisual production company made up of professionals from the film industry, particularly documentary filmmaking. The collective project began in 2009 and took its current form in 2019. We believe in socially engaged cinema, and this has always driven us to respond to the urgency of telling stories and the need to publicly share the meaning expressed by our films.
For us, producing a film means focusing on how our works are produced, made and distributed. We work to build communities around each film and the story it tells, launching crowdfunding campaigns and widespread grassroots distribution in order to nurture social and political dynamics.
This model, which sees popular co-production and grassroots distribution as two sides of the same coin, has enabled us to make 10 films in 11 years as a group, giving national relevance and visibility to stories that otherwise would not have been told.
After Tomorrow’s Land, SMK Factory produced several documentaries through popular co-production campaigns: Kosovo vs Kosovo (2012), Una follia effimera (2012), Green Lies (2014), Vite al Centro (2014), Quale Petrolio? (2016), The Harvest (2017), The Milky Way (2020), and I’m Still Here (2021).

Nicola Zambelli

Filmmaker and author of documentaries, photographic reportage, installations, and videos for theatre, dance and art. The feature films he has worked on have been screened in Italy and abroad, receiving several awards at national and international festivals.

His latest film was co-produced by Al Jazeera and distributed worldwide by Journeyman Pictures, winning numerous international awards including Best Film Arab Network Human Rights Films (Karama Human Rights Film Festival), Human Rights Doc (Naples Human Rights Film Festival), Best Feature Film (Activists without Borders), Best Photography (Documentaria Film Festival), Best Film - Human Rights Award Valentina Pedicini (Life After Oil FF), and others.

He works as a director and director of photography.
He holds a degree in Hermeneutic Philosophy, with a thesis on the narrative identity of the self, and a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from IED Milan.