The John Dalli Mystery shown for the first time at Copenhagen film festival

The John Dalli Mystery, a political thriller-documentary directed by Jeppe Rønde and featuring fellow Danes Mads Brügger and Mikael Bertelsen coping with the novel experience of dealing with the Maltese former European Commissioner, was shown for the first time this week at the Copenhagen documentary film festival, COP:DOX, where it received a special mention.

There were 1,100 people in the audience, 900 of whom bought tickets, the rest being guests of the producers. The film is fascinating and eminently watchable, though of course my perspective is what it is because I am Maltese and know the people involved.

From a film-making perspective, though, its qualities are unassailable. The one change I would have made would be to use English sub-titles for the parts where Silvio Zammit is interviewed as his way of speaking is barely intelligible.

Through this film we learn that Silvio Zammit has at least one nude photograph of key witness Gayle Kimberley, which he calls “evidence” but which came across more like a blackmail tool. Brügger and Bertelsen saw it -Zammit showed it to them at Peppi’s Kiosk – but they do not show it on screen.

On screen, John Dalli is asked about his relationship with Zammit and he tries unsuccessfully to distance himself, first calling him a good friend, then describing him as a canvasser, then saying “we are not close”.

Brügger and Bertelsen show him the photograph below, in which Dalli is photographed in holiday mode in an Italian village with Silvio Zammit and with Iosif Galea, another key person in the debacle, who had an affair with the married Kimberley, through which she appears to have been drawn into the mess by the unscrupulous individuals involved. Dalli bridles when shown the picture, and reacts with hostility, saying that they were not on holiday together but that they bumped into each other by chance and the other two wanted to take a picture with him as you do when you meet another Maltese person abroad.

The film also shows clearly that Louisa Dalli, his younger daughter, has quite a severe speech impediment and is completely in thrall to her father, cast in the role of sidekick. She defends him fiercely, struggling to get the words out, clearly stressed, while he sits there coolly, watching her painful defence of him with satisfaction.

I found this part of the film quite distressing, wondering what sort of father would expose his daughter like that instead of making sure she kept away from the camera and all involvement in that kind of business. The older daughter, Claire Gauci Borda, appears nowhere, smartly removing herself from the equation even though she played the key role in liaising with the American investors who never saw their money again.

I asked whether the film will be shown in Malta and was told that there are no plans for that yet. It will be a full house if they do.