36 hours

36 Hours is a short experimental film exploring the often invisible emotional realities of unpaid dementia caregiving.

Rather than representing one individual caregiver, the film uses collective storytelling to bring together experiences drawn from conversations with unpaid caregivers. Layered voices, fragmented domestic scenes, repetition, silence and interrupted rhythms form a shared narrative around exhaustion, responsibility, grief, love and the ways care can reshape everyday life.

The title refers to the experience of days that can feel longer than twenty-four hours when care continues through the night, without a clear beginning or end. Across the film, ordinary domestic actions accumulate into a picture of caregiving that is intimate but also structural: a form of labour that is constantly present, yet often remains unseen.

Rather than explaining caregiving from a distance, 36 Hours attempts to create emotional proximity, inviting audiences to encounter some of its uncertainty, repetition and emotional contradiction.

The film developed as part of Who Cares About Care?, Zahra Baqer's research-led body of work examining the experiences of unpaid family caregivers supporting people living with dementia.

The project grew from lived experience and expanded through conversations with caregivers, analysis of publicly shared caregiver testimonies, engagement with professionals, and research around care, ambiguous loss, emotional labour and the social structures surrounding unpaid caregiving.

These different voices were not reproduced as individual testimonies within the film. Instead, they were brought together into a collective fictional narrative, allowing recurring experiences to overlap without presenting any one story as representative of all caregivers.

Sound became central to this process. Voices move across and interrupt one another, while domestic sounds, pauses and silence build a sense of time that is fragmented and continuously interrupted by care.

36 Hours was screened at BFI Southbank as part of the Royal College of Art's 2026 graduate showcase.

The screening opened conversations with audiences as well as professionals working within dementia care and support. The film was subsequently invited for a private organisational screening at Carers UK, while also entering wider professional conversations through Alzheimer's Society and related care networks.