Dear Dom, the cinema documentary about former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, was allocated a grant of €53,464 by the Malta Film Fund.

Another four films also received funds in 2008 from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, which was responsible for the fund’s administration at the time.

So far, 50 per cent of the grant has been paid, a spokesman for the Culture Ministry told The Sunday Times.

Film-maker Pierre Ellul said the film was completed below the forecast budget so a part of the grant will be refunded according to the revised budget, as stipulated by the fund rules.

In 2008, responsibility of the fund was transferred to the Office of the Prime Minister but now falls under the Ministry of Culture. It is administered together with the Malta Film Commission.

“The aim of the Malta Film Fund is to assist local film-makers to develop their own productions and capacity to tap into European Union funding programmes directed towards the audiovisual sector,” the ministry said, adding that it has been successful.

“This programme is one of the means by which the government is assisting the artistic community in attaining more professional status.”

The ministry added that Dear Dom came to be screened at the Helsinki European Film Week after a request was made by the European Commission Representation in Finland to the Embassy of Malta in Copenhagen.

The ministry then contacted Maltese producers who had successfully concluded their projects under the Malta Film Fund.

Earlier last week, Yana Mintoff Bland – Dom Mintoff’s daughter and prospective Labour Party candidate – said she was talking to her lawyers about the film and questioned how much public money was used for its production.

She also asked whether the Nationalist government “pulled strings” to have it featured in Helsinki.

Yana Mintoff talks about her politics and her father in this newspaper today.