Lights, camera, no accountability: Johann Grech’s spin

You wake up to an address to the nation and discover it’s not the Prime Minister, not the President, not even a Minister, but the Film Commissioner.

No crisis. No emergency. Just Johann Grech, solemnly informing the country that cameras have, in fact, been rolling.

The sheer audacity is cinematic. A role created to administer incentives and facilitate productions is suddenly elevated by its own occupant into a platform for national proclamation.

Then come the numbers. They arrive in battalions: Millions generated, jobs multiplied, growth six times faster, returns four times higher (a few months ago, he said three). No sources. No methodology. No independent verification. Just ‘facts’, declared so firmly that questioning them feels almost unpatriotic.

The recurring “we” is particularly rich. “We transformed the industry.” “We became agents of change.” “We delivered.” Who is “we”?

Clearly, the Labour Party in government has given Grech, its electoral campaign (marketing) adviser, so much power that it feeds his delusions of grandeur.

He said “Europe follows us”, seemingly unaware of the history of European film production.

It’s a linguistic trick where one man speaks as though he personally shepherded 200 productions onto the island while the rest of Malta stood by holding reflectors. Collective effort is invoked only to enlarge his own silhouette.

Every success conveniently coincides with his tenure, but he ignores accountability.

The National Audit Office (NAO) found €4 million unaccounted for, and when grilled by a parliamentary committee to explain, he failed to go beyond spin. Lots of words, very little substance. And Labour MPs sitting on the committee made sure the questioning stopped.

According to the NAO, while the Film Commission received €7.2 million between 2019 and 2022 to upgrade its infrastructure -mainly the tanks at the Malta Film Studios – its accounts show that only €2.4 million was spent. Where the remaining funds went remains unexplained.

This has not stopped the Film Commissioner from boasting about the project as though it were completed rather than chronically delayed.

He said the government earned four times more than it spent to attract these films to Malta. This figure has been highly contested, and when questioned by parliament, all Grech could provide was a report he commissioned, and we paid for, that failed to meet the standards required for proper scrutiny.

Still, the numbers kept coming: 15,000 jobs supported, 1,800 new crew members, €730 million in production spend. Each figure grander than the last, each more detached from context. And the Film Commissioner has consistently refused Freedom of Information requests demanding answers.

Local producers have repeatedly criticised the cash-rebate system for favouring international headlines, which we usually sponsor, over domestic sustainability. Meanwhile, Maltese artists report late payments and shrinking opportunities, realities absent from this carefully curated success story.

“We created a revolution,” he said. Clearly, he’s never experienced one.

In his own promo, Grech appears to think that history began eight years ago, when he took over.

The Mediterrane Film Festival was duly name-checked, as all flagships must be, though less was said about priorities.

In 2024, Grech spent around half a million euro on a small promotional production in which he himself played a central role, quite pitifully. It is therefore reasonable to ask how much this latest national promo cost.

It opens, notably, with one of the two celebrity endorsers he regularly flies in – Russell Crowe – singing his praise.

The other, David Walliams, was conspicuously absent this time, following a series of controversies involving inappropriate and sexually explicit comments, his exit from Britain’s Got Talent, and his being dropped by HarperCollins UK over harassment allegations. Some edits, it seems, are easier than others.

Throughout the scripted speech, Grech repeatedly invoked “Tagħna lkoll,” the Labour Party slogan crafted under disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat – a campaign Grech himself helped build. Where does the current prime minister stand in all of this?

And let’s not overlook the grand finale: The future. Master plans, super stages, decades of prosperity, announced with the certainty of prophecy. None of it built yet, but all of it already counted.

In this cinematic universe, aspiration is indistinguishable from achievement, as long as the lighting is right.

This was a trailer for a man who has confused a supporting role with the lead and public office with a personal brand. Whatever it pretended to be, it was unmistakably a political message delivered in the lead-up to general elections –  and yet again, we fund it.

Yet Johann Grech does not feel he needs to answer to us, and for some reason, he is allowed to get away with it.