Luzzu

Alex Camilleri's 2021 Maltese film follows Jesmark, the last of a family that has fished for generations, and the decision he makes when his boat starts taking on water. The costs of treating his newborn child are rising; legal fishing no longer supports a living, and the unregistered market appears as a way out. The film's strength is framing the decision not as a moral test but as a calculation: quotas, subsidies and boat scrappage schemes sit concretely inside the story. Camilleri had real fishermen play the fishermen; Jesmark Scicluna in the lead is not an actor and won a special jury award for acting at Sundance. The pace is slow and the plot plain. Who it's for: viewers who like European realist cinema and films about work. Who it's not for: anyone wanting pace, or an ending that resolves.