I have mixed emotions about last week’s European Film Awards broadcast live on TVM2. A pleasant evening but three things were irritating and offensive.

Firstly, I don’t think that I ever viewed an Academy Award ceremony where not one, but two ministers make a speech. Imagine the US President or a senator delivering a speech at the Oscars. Yet this tiny island manages to start the show with two politicians scoring points at a European and national level.

I wonder how this works. Shall we finance this from taxpayers’ money as long as we are part of the show?

Secondly, I found the host and presenter, German comedian Anke Engelke, talented and quite entertaining. I did not mind the particular reference to actresses. I understood the context and I did not think the foul language was offensive. But the same presenter went way too far when she shouted the same ‘f’ word in a three-line phrase in between the names of Jesus and Christ. She should have shown some respect to the host nation.

At this point I was expecting the honourable ministers to rise and leave the show. Or are we trying to appease Europe to the point of throwing away our Christian heritage? On several occasions, Engelke referred to the venue as the Sacra Infermeria. I wonder if she understood the meaning of sacra.

Finally, when receiving his merited award, Austrian film director Michael Haneke decided to deliver his speech in German. He was assisted by an interpreter but just kept on rambling in German, not giving time to the interpreter to translate his speech. When he finally stopped the poor girl was overwhelmed by the amount of information she was supposed to have memorised and obviously left quite a bit out.

When Haneke went up for his second award, he rudely gave his back to the interpreter and made his now brief speech in English. This courageous interpreter spontaneously did her job again by translating from English to German, totally washing down the arrogance of this Austrian director. The host should have awarded one of those statuettes to this interpreter.

Another well-deserved statuette would go to the Maltese band Brikkuni. I totally enjoyed their artistic performance and the fresh approach to the continuity of the show.

All in all, this was an entertaining evening, although a far cry from the Oscars and US films the European Film Academy was trying to belittle. Despite the unnecessary blasphemy, I believe the evening was a good showcase for Malta, but I expect I would be asking too much in asking the same honourable ministers to tell us how much this show cost us taxpayers?

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