ABOUT ME

DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER * CREATIVE DIRECTOR * VISUAL STORY TELLER

ABOUT ME

I'm Marco Zingaretti, director and creative director with over fifteen years of work in cinema, documentary and corporate communication.

I started doing every job there was to do on set and behind the screen. Assistant, camera operator, copywriter, producer, director. I didn't have a precise career plan, but it was the only way I knew to understand how a story really works when it moves from paper to screen, and then from screen to the viewer.

That layering of experiences, which at times seemed like a disordered path, has become over time my most precise tool. Today I direct documentaries and branded content with the same approach I've always worked with: I look for the point of view that makes a story necessary, and I build around that a film that lasts. Not in the sense of duration, but in the sense of what remains after viewing—the image, the feeling, the question left open.

I've directed documentaries selected and awarded at international festivals, produced content for broadcasters like Rai and Mediaset, worked with sports brands like Arena and Garmin, with public institutions like Poste Italiane and the Foundation School of Cultural Heritage and Activities of the Ministry of Culture, with industrial groups like ASTM. Very different contexts, which have in common only one thing: the need to tell something worth listening to.

Marco Zingaretti director and visual storyteller

Marco Zingaretti and Erri De Luca on the set of the Rai Play documentary

Marco Zingaretti at work as director on a documentary set

The hybrid territory

I work in the borderland between cinema and corporate communication. I don't see it as a gray area or a compromise. I consider it the most honest and interesting place to be, because that's where stories still need to be built with rigor, not just packaged.

On one side are the films: Ouroboros, awarded at the National Gallery of Modern Art; Alé, selected in over twenty international festivals and distributed on Mediaset Infinity Plus; The Experimental Age, written by Erri De Luca, published on RaiPlay after a path through international festivals that earned it recognition in California, Spain and Italy.

On the other side is work with companies: a long series of corporate documentaries for ASTM, campaigns for outdoor and sports brands, large-scale institutional projects. These two areas don't contradict each other. They feed each other. The narrative rigor I apply when shooting an artistic documentary is the same I bring to a corporate branded documentary. The difference isn't in the quality of the gaze, it's in the final recipient of the story and the function that story must serve over time.

Directing Erri De Luca, a writer with a precise and hardly compressible voice and presence, taught me something no documentary directing manual could have taught me: that the director's job is not to control the subject, but to create the conditions in which the subject reveals itself. That same ability, applied to a CEO, a founder, a work team, produces something completely different from a conventional corporate video. It produces a document, in the fullest sense of the word.

Marco Zingaretti on the set of The Valley Utopia

Marco Zingaretti and Mauro Gervasini at the Trento Film Festival, photo by Loredana Berguecio Bertolini

la direzione

For me, creative direction is a way of building meaning: shaping a vision, defining a language, finding the narrative thread that holds a project together from idea to realization.

I've applied it for nearly ten years at Soul Film Production and with agencies Boole01 and ISay, creating visual identities, concepts and narrative paths for cinema, campaigns and cross-media communication.

It's the compass that allows a story to be clear, coherent and recognizable, whatever the format or context in which it comes to life.

A story that connects lasts beyond the screen, generates value, builds identity. It remains. And when a story remains, it's no longer just content: it becomes an asset, a message, a point of view.

It becomes what makes a project meaningful.

Alcuni PREMI E RICONOSCIMENTI

Miglior commercial - Time is out of joint - Galleria d'Arte Moderna e contemporanea di Roma

Ouroboros

Marco Zingaretti sul set di Vai Via - Folcast

How I work on your projects

Creative direction

I supervise the entire narrative journey, transforming an idea into a coherent and recognizable vision, with a creative direction that maintains identity and style across every platform.

Direction and production

Dirigo documentari, spot, video istituzionali e contenuti social con uno sguardo cinematografico.

Consulting and mentoring

I offer creative consultancy to companies to strengthen their visual identity and support filmmakers in the development, writing, and production of projects for TV and cinema.

what can we do?
create together

CORPORATE DOCUMENTARIES

Corporate documentary is the most undervalued narrative tool in Italian business communication. It allows telling the true identity of an organization through people, processes, values and authentic stories. It's a narrative tool that builds credibility, reputation and emotional connection with the audience.

Compared to any other video format, corporate documentary generates long-term narrative capital. Beyond the final film, it generates a cross-platform image bank: a reusable visual asset for campaigns, social media, presentations, PR and internal communication.

Strengths:

Authentic, credible and human storytelling
Reputational value in the medium-long term
Reusable content in multiple formats and channels
High-impact cinematic imagery
Perfect for employer branding, CSR, internal communication

BRANDED CONTENT

Branded content that works doesn't look like advertising. It looks like something people choose to watch all the way through, and that they remember not because it convinced them of something, but because it said something true.

It's a delicate balance that can't be achieved with a good creative idea alone. It requires knowing how to build narrative tension, manage rhythm, know when the brand enters the frame and when it's more effective to stay in the background. These are skills that come from documentary directing, not from marketing.

Strengths:

High engagement and memorability
Tells values, not just products
Suitable for social, digital campaigns and editorial platforms
Contemporary, authentic and non-intrusive language
Perfect for serial formats and hybrid content

STORYTELLING STRATEGICO

Before the format comes the story. Before the story comes the right question: what is this communication really about, what do you want the viewer to think, feel, do after seeing it. Strategic storytelling is the work that answers that question before any production begins, and for this reason determines the effectiveness of everything that follows.

It's what allows a brand or company to communicate in a coherent, recognizable and distinctive way. Invisible but fundamental work that guides all subsequent communication.

Strengths: