Lighthouse & Ashley’s short film Daqqet ix-Xita/Plangent Rain has bagged two gongs at the Malta International TV Short Film Festival Awards.

In a televised ceremony, to be aired on TVM on September 30 at 9.15 p.m., the production company beat foreign competition in garnering an award for best cinematography, with the other trophy going for best direction.

The awards come hot on the heels of a string of confirmed international screenings ranging as far afield as the Oaxaca International Film Festival in Mexico, the Mediterranean Short Film Festival in Tangiers (Morocco), the Cyprus International Film Festival, the Salento Finibus Terrae and Trani Film Festival in Italy, Madrid and Brussels for Eurocine27, the Short Film Corner in Cannes and Raindance in London.

In Malta, the film has also been screened at the Kinemastik International Film Festival, and will be shown again next week during Notte Bianca. Directed by Kenneth Scicluna and inspired in equal parts by Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the city of Valletta, the film looks at the particular moment when a young man tries to break away from the dark, humid environment that has oppressed him for years.

The film has attracted praise from Silver Bear winner Béla Tarr, who commented that he “liked its atmosphere very much, and its peculiar sadness”.

Daqqet ix-Xita is the first film to be co-financed by the Malta Film Fund, a government-run fund aimed at making the voice of Maltese film-making heard in international cinemas.

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