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Oliver Mallia • Director, Valletta Film Festival

“Valletta is a festival of quality with many opportunities to grow”

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- At the third Valletta Film Festival, Cineuropa caught up with Oliver Mallia, one of the founders and directors of the gathering, to talk about the event’s ambitions for the future

Oliver Mallia  • Director, Valletta Film Festival

The Valletta Film Festival (VFF) celebrated its third edition recently, and Cineuropa got the chance to catch up with Oliver Mallia, the co-founder and co-director (along with Slavko Vukanovic) of Malta’s most important cinematic event.

Cineuropa: How would you introduce your festival?
Oliver Mallia:
 The Valletta Film Festival is an informal, adventurous, fun event that shows quality films and brings audiences closer to the filmmakers who create them.

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How quickly has the VFF evolved since its conception?
The Film Grain Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind the VFF, was set up in 2014 to foster a greater appreciation of film and to introduce a type of cinema that was rarely exhibited on the Maltese islands. Just 24 months ago, Malta was the only country in the EU without a national film festival. We understood there was a thirst for a festival when on our first night we screened Jafar Panahi’s Taxi and 800 people showed up at the open-air theatre to watch it. This event encouraged us immensely, and from then on, we continued doing our best to keep up the momentum. Now we’ve just concluded the third edition of this festival that, in two years, saw us screen over 120 independent features and 75 short films. More importantly, we attracted over 23,000 visitors, which, for a country like Malta, is no mean feat. We’re still a young festival, so we’re still experimenting, but we have already created some interesting aspects that are helping to develop our identity.

What could be the advantages of such a young festival?
Given the many established festivals around us, it is hard to talk about relevance and advantages after only three years, but we have the ambition to grow. Nevertheless, directors who visited us at the past three editions, such as Roland JofféAlan Parker and Agnieszka Holland, have all mentioned that Valletta is a fantastic city that offers a spectacular experience to any festival-goer. The fact that one can enjoy an independent film in a fantastic location under the stars is something that not many festivals can offer. We would also like to further promote the cinematic output of islands; we already have the “Islanders” section that brings together films from various islands around the world. We are targeting young cinema professionals, film students or enthusiasts, as we offer them the possibility to visit a beautiful country, enjoy great films and meet established filmmakers in an informal environment at a fraction of the cost that they would pay elsewhere.

Do you intend to continue the focus on the cinema of smaller nations?
The Valletta Film Festival is not an industry event; however, the experience of last year’s Cinema of Small Nations conference showed us how necessary it is for small countries to talk about their situations and to co-operate to find solutions to common issues. It is too early to say where we could go with this initiative in the years to come; however, we’re determined to organise another meeting next year and possibly start other initiatives for filmmakers from small nation states. We hope to have a way forward finalised by early next year.

How difficult is it to secure such an extended line-up ever year?
The number of films submitted to us is increasing year on year, and we do select a good number of features – plus, all the shorts come from submissions. The main issue we encounter when closing deals is related to the fact that we are often pegged as a territory lumped in with either the UK, due to our colonial history and language, or Italy, due to our geographical proximity, which forces us to lose some titles because the distributors may prefer to keep them for release in their home countries. This is a puzzling situation that affects not just the festival, but film distribution in general. Earlier this year, the Film Grain Foundation wrote to Europa International to explain the issue, and we now look forward to starting talks to find a solution.

Are you satisfied with this edition of the VFF?
Yes, we’re quite satisfied with the outcome of the third edition, and particularly with the programme that we managed to put together. I think the success of a film festival needs to be judged over a number of years, so this edition served to consolidate our identity as a festival of quality with many opportunities to grow.

Do you have high expectations for the next edition, which coincides with Valletta being European Capital of Culture?
With the attention that Valletta should be getting because of this title, we hope that more audiences around Europe will discover this beautiful city and our little festival. With regard to programming, it is still early days; however, we have a few ideas that we’re developing, which we hope to announce in the autumn.

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