Maltese film beats foreign entries to win top award

A Maltese production team has won an award for best overall picture in an international short film festival aired on TVM.

The Bigger Picture team members, David Serge and Matthew Pullicino, won with their 10-minute wartime film .303 that was also awarded best cinematography and the local jury award.

The film involved three days of filming with an all-Maltese cast and it took the production team about two months to put together, Mr Pullicino said, adding that .303 could now be viewed on the You Tube video sharing site.

The TV short film festival was the first of its kind in Malta and its success was evident by the number of entries: 120 from around the globe, with over half being Maltese.

Entries were judged by a panel of four rotating jurors, whose decision had a 60 per cent weighting on the result while a public vote had the remaining 40 per cent.

Chris Aquilina's film Specere and Raymond Mizzi's work Lucrezia won best music video and viewer's choice awards respectively.

Director Mathjs Geijskies, from the Netherlands, won the best script award with the film 50 Cents and the best editing award for another short movie called Stop.

Zambian Rhoda Kawinga's film The Woolen Hat won best sound, Spanish director David Priego won best animation with Rascal Street and Germans Lars Henning and Herbert Fehrmann won best foreign jury award and best director for their films Security and The Lie.

PBS chairman Clare Thake Vassallo said the public broadcaster would like to turn this event into an annual one. However, attracting funding was not easy. The problem lay in that this type of television film festival did not fall under any of the EU's funding categories, she said.