Spazju Kreattiv is this weekend hosting its first film festival of the year: a brand new festival, featuring various nature documentaries, focusing, in particular, on the sea, and films from around the world.

Titled MedFilm in Malta – We Love the Sea, it is organised by Costantino Films Ltd in collaboration with the MedFilm Festival of Rome and forms part of an international partnership with the film festivals of Formentera, Palma de Mallorca, Menorca, Ortigia, Alghero and Montenegro. 

Supported by National Geographic and Arts Council Malta, the festival’s organisers said that MedFilm in Malta aims to combine the love of cinema with that of the environment and, in particular, the protection of the sea. Besides, the festival intends to make “all the cultural shores of the Mediterranean Sea get to know each other and establish a dialogue”.

“The festival aims to make all the cultural shores of the Mediterranean establish a dialogue”

The event will kick off today with a short film programme at 4pm, featuring the films La Petite, Li Paradisi, Le Bain and Sukar.

Regina

At 6pm, the Italian film Regina will be screened. Certified 15, the 2020 drama follows a 15-year-old girl who has lost her mother and dreams of becoming a singer. Her father, who had given up his own musical career to be near his daughter, firmly believes in her talent. Their relationship seems rock-solid until, one day, an unexpected event turns their lives upside down.

The 2020 English film Miss Marx is then showing at 8pm. It revolves around Karl Marx’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, who was bright, intelligent, passionate and free. She was among the first women to link the themes of feminism and socialism and took part in workers’ battle and fought for women’s rights and the abolition of child labour. In 1883, she met Edward Aveling and her life was crushed by a passionate but tragic love story. Miss Marx is certified 15.

Miss Marx

Tomorrow, the documentary Heroes of the Mediterranean will be screened at 11.30am. Marine biologist and National Geographic explorer Manu San Felix investigates the devastating effect humans have had on the Spanish Mediterranean and meets some ‘heroes’ who are trying to reverse the damage. The screening will be following by a Q&A sessions with members of Eco Marine Malta.

Representatives of the marine enterprise will also be present at two other screenings on the day, first of which is the National Geographic documentary, Ocean’s Breath, at 2.30pm. In the film, two National Geographic explorers embark on an eye-opening journey through the past, present and future of coral reefs, looking for solutions that could help save them from extinction.

The other documentary, showing at 5.30pm, is Sea of Hope: America’s Underwater Treasures, which follows ocean legend Sylvia Earle, underwater National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry, writer Max Kennedy and their crew of teenage aquanauts on a long-year quest to use science and photography to inspire then president Barack Obama to establish blue parks across an unseen American wilderness.

Sea of Hope: America's Underwater Treasures

At 9pm, the 2020 Arabic film Gaza Mon Amour will be shown. The romantic drama, certified 15, is about an old fisherman who falls in love with a woman who works at a market with her daughter. One day, he finds an ancient statue of Apollo in his fishing nets and decides to approach her with the discovery.

Gaza Mon Amour

Sunday’s programme opens with another National Geographic documentary, Pristine Seas: The Power of Protection, which takes a look at the Pristine Seas project, launched by National Geographic explorer Enric Sala in 2008 to explore and help the protection of the last wild places in the ocean.

The festival will come to an end with the 2020 French comedy drama À l’abordage!. The protagonists here are an unlikely oddball trio who bond during an impromptu trip to the French countryside on a foolhardy romantic mission. The film is certified 12.

À l'abordage!

All films will be shown in their original language with English subtitles. For tickets and more details, log on to www.kreattivita.org. All patrons must present a valid vaccination certificate at the point of entry.