In 2020, I took what is perhaps the boldest decision I’ll ever take in my life. Only a few days into enrolling in a software development course, I decided to flip all my lifelong dreams on their head and make a radical switch to a Bachelor in Communications course. Not many people understood the logic behind my decision. At the time, I’m not sure I understood either.

Ever since then, throughout my course’s 3-year duration, I’ve produced assignments in the form of product and app designs, documentaries and (most ambitiously) an 11,000-word dissertation on the study of minimalism in the art form of film.

No single assignment makes me as proud as this one.

I made ‘Making Maltese Movies’ because all throughout those first months at my new University course, film was all I would consume, contemplate, analyse and study. I made it out of sheer love towards the film industry – specifically the indigenous film industry – and the talented Maltese filmmakers that continued to make their own films, against all odds. And I did it… because it got me talking to some of the island’s finest filmmakers.

Indeed, ever since I’ve made the magazine, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with the cinematographic genius that is Matthew Muscat Drago as a DoP on my documentary and work alongside Abigail Mallia (who remains, in my humble opinion, Malta’s finest director) on a Maltese TV show.

This magazine also helped me build some journalistic confidence, through countless hours of interviews with the 5 filmmakers, and served as an incredible introduction to the nooks and crannies of Adobe InDesign. I delve further into the design process of this magazine in the below sketchbook, produced as a supplement to my University assignment.