Ciao Ciao, a new satirical film in Maltese and English, premieres on March 19. I talked to Maltese filmmaker and Ciao Ciao director Keith A. Tedesco, best known for Uwijja and Serena, to find out more about the film and its inspiration.
“Every time we visit Malta from the Netherlands where I live now, my Dutch wife comments on how long it takes for the Maltese to say goodbye at the door,” smiles Keith. “We have an incredible ability to linger. In Holland, my father-in-law simply announces he’s leaving says Goodbye and closes the door behind him. It’s so different!”
“They tell you in film school to write what you know,” he laughs, “and this got me thinking. I am always jotting down stories and so the rest of the film is also based on things that have happened to me, or that I have witnessed. Also in almost every comment, every line, there’s a reference to or a representation of something that’s happening in the world right now.”
“The film is in three acts, the first of which is entirely about the extension of Maltese goodbyes,” Keith explains. “It’s about two couples, in their early forties who haven’t seen each other for a decade, and they have a reunion dinner. As in real life, over that time their perspectives and attitudes have changed and so, where they were once best friends, now there’s tension.”
“Funnily enough, when I began writing Caio Ciao, I didn’t plan that it would be funny. It started life rather dark and so I started including situations to make people smile. And because I’m a big fan of writers’ room and forums, I co-wrote the film with three of the ten actors – Chris Dingli, Antonella Axisa and Mikhail Basmadjian who are also writers. It was the best experience! Chris in particular is a natural-born comedian, so he really helped lighten up the script. And the beauty of our collaborative approach was that if we ever weren’t sure that something was going to work, we would just act it out, a live trial and error process.
As a script-writer, Keith is known for his focus on perspective changes so during Ciao Ciao, the audience will see several perspectives which, by the end of the film, gives them an overview of what happened during the evening. “The story includes twists and turns everywhere: people will never guess where it’s going. Although the script took about six months to write, I didn’t even know for sure until 10 days before we finished it!” he adds. “I hope people leaving the cinema will come out chuckling, smiling at themselves and at our Maltese goodbyes.”
“Around 80% of the action happens in a single house. The whole film was mostly shot in a townhouse in Mellieħa over a ten-day period last September. We filmed during the Festa and the story isn’t set during the feast so we had to work around the fireworks. That was painful!” he grins.
Keith chose to shoot the whole film in full frame, black and white, using rehoused vintage Mamiya photo lenses to enhance the rich contrast. He also decided to write Ciao Ciao 80% in Maltese, and 20% in English, “to represent the way Maltese speak in daily life, switching from Maltese to English and back throughout a conversation.”
“Because we’re bilingual, this mix is more believable than when you hear actors on screen speaking exclusively Maltese. That doesn’t sound realistic to me. The mix is how we speak, and reflects our history. And there’s also one character who only speaks in English, a stance that is familiar amongst Maltese.” he adds.
“Although a film in Maltese is never, for example, going to make it onto Netflix, I still wanted to produce one because I am Maltese. We are Maltese here, we have our own stories to tell and maybe sometimes it’s better to say it in our own language. My ambition is one day to win an Oscar with Best International Feature promoting the Maltese language!”
Ciao Ciao was supported by Arts Council Malta, part financed by Lampa Stampa Films in collaboration with Roughcut pictures. The film runs for approximately 100 minutes and is recommended for age 15 and over. It will be screened across Malta and Gozo from March 28.