We are a country of proud people with too much ego. If you’re in any doubt about this, take a look at any social media post even mildly criticising the island and witness the online massacre of the person daring to point out the flaw. I used to be proud of my country, too, of all the brilliant minds such a small rock had managed to churn out against all odds but the more that time passes, the more embarrassed I feel.

I remember screaming at the computer screen during the COVID-19 pandemic when the former minister of tourism spoke on the BBC about reopening our airports. I sat there gobsmacked as she visibly and uncomfortably struggled to answer the straightforward questions put to her. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion as she ducked and dodged all inquiries gracelessly and kept repeating the badly pronounced word ‘mechanisms’ over and over again. I couldn’t believe how ill-prepared she sounded. Even now, I can’t watch that interview without cringing.

I felt exactly that same sensation this week watching a resurfaced interview with film commissioner Johann Grech. All the interviewer asked was what his favourite Maltese film was, and instead of giving her a straight answer, he went down a convoluted rabbit hole that not even God could have pulled him out of. He could have literally said, Il-Madonna taċ-Ċoqqa, and no one would have batted an eyelid but, instead, he went on a Hamlet-like soliloquy holding his own skull in his hand. It’s so troubling, and, yes, I’ll say it again, embarrassing, that most of the people chosen for positions of power seem to be so incapable of doing the bare minimum their job requires.

Of course, if the reports are to be believed, an area where Grech is definitely not inefficient in is spending taxpayer money. I’m not even going to go into the millions spent on the film festival, which were already heavily criticised last year, but when I learnt about the allegations that no less than €500,000 were spent on a 10-minute clip featuring Grech himself, I was going to have a heart attack.

Someone is signing off on all these lavish decisions that make Cleopatra look like a common country girl- Anna Marie Galea

Time and time again, we have been told there is no funding available to cultivate local productions, and, here we are, spending hundreds of thousands on vanity projects and supposedly investing in foreign talent.

It’s disgusting and shameful that local filmmakers and actors have been reduced to begging for crumbs of funding but I suppose that failure to mention a single Maltese film showed everyone everything they need to know about what the film commissioner thinks about the “indigenous” film landscape.

I find it hard to understand how the authorities keep greenlighting this kind of behaviour unless they either agree with Grech’s preference to invest in external talent over our own or have some covert reason for not wanting to rock his proverbial luxury yacht. Nothing surprises me anymore.

At the end of the day, someone is signing off on all these lavish decisions that make Cleopatra look like a common country girl. Apparently, no amount of public outrage is going to stand in the way of a good time.

We used to be a real country but now we’re just a badly written, overly expensive joke.