Dir/Wri: Peter Sant | Cast: Dimitrios Gainnakoudakis, Crishelle Medrano, Mehdi Aouni | Drama Malta 99’
A man is left adrift and disillusioned on the island of Malta when his family leaves him in Peter Sant’s latest feature, an arthouse follow-up to Of Time and the Sea (2018).
After his wife clears off with their little daughter, Dimitri (Dimitri Giannakoudakis) becomes homeless eventually finding himself sharing a house with a hardworking delivery driver who is generous, up to a point.
But soon even ‘Mr India’ grows tired of supporting this middle-aged loser who spends his days drinking and aimlessly roaming a seaside town, sponging off his friends. And when Dimitri strikes up a romantic relationship with Philippine carer Annie, also down on her luck, things really come unstuck.
With a jagged score and woozy handheld camera underpinned by incisive social commentary on the fragility of human relationships in the shifting tide of contempo Europe, Zafzifa (a Maltese word for the sound of air or liquid oozing through an opening) conjures up a febrile vision of this holiday island full of people who don’t really belong. Making use of impressionistic images, often shot after dark or in stark sunlight, Sant portrays the doubtful day-to-day life of the lost and directionless hoping for a better life while just trying to survive.
With his rough-hewn physicality Giannakoudakis makes for a muscular but unappealing presence as Dimitri, filling the screen with his brooding looks. Unable to find gainful employment, not that he appears to be looking that hard, he is also suffering from an identity crisis: “’I’ve been here most of my life but I wouldn’t call it home”. And indeed we don’t get much of a sense of identity either of this southern Mediterranean island, beyond its pleasant climate and rocky shores bathed by turquoise waters. At one point a procession weaving through the streets suggests a thriving Christian community where English is spoken along with Maltese, a semitic language, and occasionally Italian.
In this latest offering, World premiering at Cairo International Film Festival the Australian-born Maltese-based filmmaker dredges the squalid backwaters of the sunny location, where of the collection of dislocated, disenchanted migrant workers strive to make a living on the back of the hospitality industry. Each one has a sob story to tell about a life gone slightly off the rails. Medhi (Mehdi Aouni), a French speaking Tunisian, is doing better than most, a self-starter he too has been in Malta a long time. Although unhappily married to a rich local woman, Mehdi has found work with a local construction firm: apparently Malta is experiencing a building boom. Annie has come here to raise her young son, but her tentative relationship with Dimitri feels forced and unnatural, and we don’t care about either of them.
Rather likes its central character, Zafzifa drifts along torpidly, the offbeat camera angles and artful images making it watchable for a while. But that alone cannot make up for the slim plotting, wooden acting and lack of any dramatic heft. @MeredithTaylor
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION | CAIRO FILM FESTIVAL 2025