Hisham Abdel Khalek the founder of Malta International Film Festival had to announce the cancellation of the festival and shared the following comments.
Filmfestivals.com team is sorry to see all these efforts go down and expresses its sympathy to Hisham and all his team members.

"Our team has been working relentlessly for a year to organize the first ever Malta International Film Festival scheduled in Valletta from September 15th to 23rd, 2007. As of June 2007, these efforts resulted in the confirmed participation of 320 international cinema professionals, directors, actors and journalists, of 70 long-feature films from 35 countries including 12 world premieres, an outstanding record for a newborn festival, and of 10 short films. The list of our confirmed guests includes Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf, twice Jury Prize winner in Cannes, Marco Müller, producer and director of Venice Film Festival, the oldest film festival in the world, French actress Virginie Ledoyen, co-star of “8 Women” by François Ozon with Catherine Deneuve and of “The Beach” by Danny Boyle with Leonardo DiCaprio, Russian actress Natalya Bondarchuk, star of Cannes’ Grand Prize of the Jury Solyaris by Andrei Tarkovsky, and acclaimed Maltese actor, writer and producer Joseph Vassallo among many other high-profile guests.

Moreover, our efforts were crowned by the support from 2 programmes of the European Union, from world-class cinema institutions like the CNC (France) and from international media like TV5Monde (France) and the cinema trade magazine Screen (UK) to name only a few.

All these achievements stand as tangible evidence of our professionalism and as signs of a coming success that will benefit Malta from year zero, and will benefit the country even more as the reputation of the festival builds up over the years. We are proud of this success and honoured by the trust of our international guests, sponsors and talented supporters from Malta who were all enthusiastic about the project.

Unfortunately and to our saddest surprise, this pride, this honour and this enthusiasm were far from being shared by the Ministry for Tourism and Culture of Malta and by the Malta Film Commission to say the least, although both of them should have been the natural supporters of such an initiative. Quite on the contrary, their behaviour and growing hostility led us to cancel the first edition ever of Malta International Film Festival.

Soon you will be published all the detailed information about the reasons behind this sad decision after the Ministry for Tourism and Culture of Malta and the Malta Film Commission provide us with the official explanations for all the reasons detailed in the official cancelation letter that they will receive.