Luzzu

On the inside of the cheerfully painted traditional Maltese fishing boat (or luzzu) with which Jesmark (Jesmark Scicluna) ekes out a living is the imprint of a pair of baby’s feet and a name. His name. This boat has seen three generations of his family grow up; it has provided for the family of his father and his grandfather. But now, as Jesmark daubs his own infant son’s soles with paint to continue the tradition, he knows deep down that time is running out for this way of life. Strict new fishing regulations and a…

Awash in blues and yellows, the colours of the traditional Maltese fishing boat known as a luzzu, Alex Camilleri’s debut is nothing short of a future neo-realist classic. Enveloped in the gentle rippling of the cerulean waves, the evocative soundscape conjures up a vision of seaside idyll. But for the hard-working fishers, rough winds seem to threaten every aspect of their financially precarious life.Ocean water courses through the veins of young Jesmark (Jesmark Scicluna), who inherits his colourful but leaking boat from…

Cousins Jesmark and David Scicluna, both fishers by trade, had never acted a day in their lives when Maltese-American film-maker Alex Camilleri spotted them in Għar Lapsi, a small inlet on the southern coast of Malta. Camilleri had flown to the Mediterranean island in search of fishers to star in his Maltese-language film Luzzu, but he was running out of time. The next day, he was due to fly back to New York, where he was working as an associate editor on Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. In a final attempt to…