Filtering the facts

When a public entity, like the Malta Film Commission, released a report last March detailing “8 Years of Growth” complete with glossy Hollywood movie stills, it is easy to get swept up in the glamour. However, a closer look at the Malta Film Commission’s March 2026 report, ‘The Impact of the Film Industry in Malta’, reveals a masterclass in economic spin.

While the report boasts staggering growth, it relies on highly complex economic modelling, selective data presentation and a convenient shuffling of timelines to paint a flawless picture of a controversial public spending programme.

Let’s break down how this report leans heavily on bias to justify its own narrative.

One of the most glaring red flags in the report is how it splits Malta’s film history into two uneven blocks: 2005–2017 (13 years) versus 2018–2025 (eight years).

By chunking a massive 13-year block together, the authors suppress the natural ‘peaks’ of earlier successes. Conversely, the post-2018 era is highly praised because it happens to coincide with a massive 40% cash rebate incentive introduced by the current leadership, which controversially includes expenses made by producers abroad and not in Malta.

The timeline feels artificially sculpted to say: “Everything before 2018 was erratic and small but everything after I Johann took over is a stable success.”

To a regular reader, phrases like “the industry has generated over €1.5 billion in gross value added” sound like cold, hard cash sitting in a Maltese bank. It isn’t.

The entire report relies on an Input-Output (I-O) model. This is a simulation tool. To generate these large numbers, the study relies heavily on ‘induced effects’, a fancy economic term for a ripple effect. Essentially, it assumes that if a foreign film crew member buys a pastizz from a local bakery, that baker will spend money at a clothing shop, who will then hire a painter and so on. While these ripple effects exist, magnifying them via simulations allows the authors to present massive, inflated numbers as definitive economic ‘truth’.

If you look closely at any chart in the report, one year sticks out like a skyscraper: 2023.

The report notes that, in 2023, the film industry magically supported a peak of 6,500 jobs and accounted for nearly a fifth of all economic growth. Buried deep in the text is the admission that this massive spike was primarily driven by a single blockbuster: Gladiator II.

The ‘Impact of the Film Industry in Malta’ is less of an objective economic audit and more of a promotional brochure- Michael Axisa

The report uses this single, extraordinary year to claim the industry is now a “stable, structural contributor” to the economy. In reality, the charts show that, as soon as Gladiator II left in 2024 and 2025, economic contributions plummeted back down by more than half. That is the definition of cyclical and project-based, not structural.

Perhaps the most manipulated section involves government finances. The report proudly states that tax revenues collected from film activities far exceed the millions handed out in cash rebates.

However, look at the actual data provided in the appendix (Table A6). For the year 2024, the ‘Yearly Fiscal Balance’ is listed as –€8.6 million. This means the government actually lost millions more on rebates than it made back in taxes that year. Yet, the main body of the text completely glosses over this deficit, choosing instead to focus purely on “cumulative benefits” to hide the loss.

Finally, we must look at who wrote and funded this report.

The data on how much money films spent was provided entirely by the Malta Film Commission itself, the very entity being evaluated. Yet, the commissioner presents this report as entirely unbiased. There is no mention of independent, third-party auditing to verify if those expenditure figures were accurate or inflated.

Furthermore, the conclusion shifts from an economic analysis into outright political PR, praising the industry’s success as a result of “strong leadership”.

The ‘Impact of the Film Industry in Malta’ is less of an objective economic audit and more of a promotional brochure.

By masking a massive deficit in 2024, treating a single lucky year (Gladiator II) as the new normal, and using theoretical models to generate massive numbers, the report creates an illusion of flawless prosperity.

Malta’s film industry certainly brings in money but the common reader deserves a script that sticks to the facts, rather than a Hollywood fairytale.

And, if all the above does not convince you, then ask yourself: If Malta’s 40% rebate to producers on expenditure that is not made in Malta is such a winning formula, why is Malta among the 1% of countries that offer anything of this kind? Are the other 99% of countries too stupid to understand Johann Grech’s economic argument or are they simply too smart?

Michael Axisa is a Maltese Canadian immigrant who graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics.