Inside Żafżifa: A portrait of modern Malta

The first thing you notice in Żafżifa is the noise. Drilling, engines, traffic and construction echo constantly throughout Buġibba, turning the town into a place that feels permanently unfinished, caught between what it was and what it is becoming.

That sense of transition sits at the centre of Peter Sant’s latest feature film, which uses Buġibba not simply as a backdrop, but as a portrait of a Malta suspended in an in-between moment of change.

Although Sant has only lived permanently in Malta for the past two years, he has spent decades returning regularly to the island, particularly St Paul’s Bay and Buġibba. Watching the area change over time gave him a different perspective on its transformation.

“These are changes that I saw over a long period of time,” he explains. “From the perspective of actually not being here permanently, you see the change in a better light, so to speak.”

Żafżifa does not present itself as a direct critique of development. Instead, Sant set to “capture a certain moment in time,” that he describes as “kind of like an in-between moment. It’s like it was what it was, and it’s becoming something else. And I’m interested in that moment of becoming.”

That sense of transition is what visually shapes Żafżifa, which is shot on 16mm film, and avoids a polished digital look. He explains that the decision to shoot on 16mm was not only an aesthetic preference but also something he felt naturally comfortable with, having worked with the format since leaving school.

He adds that there was a conceptual motivation behind the choice as well, noting that because the story follows the main character, Dimitrios, returning after a seven-year absence, the format helped convey a sense of nostalgia.

“If you’re going to talk about the idea of progress and what comes next,” he says, “then you also have to balance that out with the reverse.” He adds: “I think the 16mm lends a certain element of nostalgia that ties in with the whole thing thematically.”

Sant also says the film’s visual style was shaped by the Mediterranean environment itself, particularly the region’s distinctive blue light, which is a recurring visual motif throughout the film.

“That blue is something that I don’t think I’d manage to even hide if I wanted to. It’s there in every shot. It’s almost like what they use in films sometimes—those blue screens. It’s just a flat blue, you know, which I love,” he explains.

Sant notes that the production avoided heavy visual manipulation, instead using natural light and working with “what was in front of us in the best way possible.”

Sant also describes the film as intended for “an active audience”, asking viewers to engage rather than passively follow. Consequently, the film often features moments where characters leave a space which the camera stays to linger on. “I think you need those moments to breathe,” he says.

This approach extends to sound. Conversations continue after characters move on, ambient noise overtakes dialogue, and voices become detached from bodies. He says this gradual separation builds throughout the film and reflects the emotional distance between the two main characters.

This separation between sound and image peaks in the final sequence, where voiceovers speak in different languages. Sant describes them as something abstract. “So, these two things that were meant to be together, but cannot—a bit like the characters themselves,” he continues.

Sound is treated as a core element of the film. Machinery, engines, and traffic form a second soundtrack, as important as the score. Sant recorded thousands of hours of ambient sound across Buġibba and nearby areas. These recordings were later processed manually using reel-to-reel tape to match the film’s analogue texture.

The film also focuses on migrant workers, who appear throughout not as background figures, but as part of the reality of contemporary Buġibba. Sant says that if the film aimed to capture a snapshot of the area as it exists today, their presence could not be ignored.

“If I’m creating a snapshot of contemporary Buġibba, it would be wrong to eliminate certain aspects,” he explains. “Without them, the progress would never be there.”

He describes migrant workers as “the ruins of progress”, arguing that Malta’s idea of progress depends on their labour. Their presence in the film also reflects the island’s changing demographics and wider social reality, he says.

Viewing Malta through Dimitrios’ eyes, a returning outsider sensitive to changes locals may no longer notice, shapes the film’s perspective throughout. Sant says that although the film contains documentary elements, he “didn’t sort of set out to make a documentary film”.

Instead, Dimitrios allowed him to explore these ideas through fiction while still grounding the story in real environments and observations, without tightly controlling what happened around, using non-actors, and allowing everyday life to unfold naturally within scenes.

Many of the actors spoke in their native languages without interpreters, and dialogue was often improvised.“There was an idea and a notion,” Sant says, “and then it was up to them to take it on their own.”

Scripts were translated into multiple languages and then back into English for subtitles, reducing the director’s control over the final text.

“It gives me less authorship,” he says. “I think that doing it in that way obviously lends a sort of documentary element, but it also lends the film, I hoped, a certain vibrancy. And a life that you just couldn’t get from over-orchestrating or over-managing.”

Sant says this approach also helped avoid the heavily controlled style he associates with many mainstream productions.

The production was minimal, with a cast and crew of around 10 people. “We could all jump into two cars and go to the next location,” he muses, adding that working with a small crew created a more intimate environment during filming.

That restraint feels inseparable from Żafżifa’s wider concerns, as the film searches for intimacy, imperfection and uncertainty.

Żafżifa is currently showing at the Embassy Cinemas in Valletta and Citadel Cinemas in Gozo