DOLCE
dolce
by Charlie Cauchi
Rome once built a false face for the cameras. Malta has been wearing one for a century: Dolce lets it slip.
Malta has played ancient Rome, biblical Judea, medieval kingdoms and futures that exist nowhere at all, each layer settling over the last without quite erasing it. It's a feeling filmmaker Charlie Cauchi has lived with her whole life: an island that often feels less like home than someone else's film set.
Technical Specifications
Format: Single‑channel 4K video, colour, sound Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 Duration: 22 min 56 sec
Cast: Antonella Axisa, Mikhail Basmadjan, Zoe Camilleri, Samantha Cassar Ellis, Charlie Cauchi, Josette Ciappara, Paul Cilia, Joanna Delia, Romeo Roxman Gatt, Martina Georgina, Tiffany Pisani, Tina Rizzo, Gianni Selvaggi, Henry Zammit Cordina
Director of Photography: Julia Mingo Editor: Céline Perreard
ABOUT DOLCE
Commissioned by Arts Council Malta, Dolce is presented in the Malta Pavilion, curated by Margerita Pulè, as part of No Need to Sparkle: Experiments in Love and Revolution, at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, through 22 November 2026.
My obsession with film and filmmaking on this small island (the feeling that I live on a film set) is what inspired Dolce. Malta has long served as the perfect backdrop for international, predominantly Hollywood, cinema: a palimpsest where histories accumulate rather than disappear, used again and again by productions that rarely tell its own stories.
Dolce builds on and against that archive, from antiquity and colonial rule to today's accelerated media landscape, revealing a place where memory, identity and representation are continually rewritten. An important reference point is La Dolce Vita and Rome's 1960s transformation into "Hollywood on the Tiber"; like Fellini, I work with an acute awareness of how place is mediated and mythologised through cinema. In Dolce, that image becomes a site of resistance: background actors break the fourth wall, and I place myself within the frame too, refusing to play dead.
Read the full director's statement in the press notes.
LA biennale di venezia art: malta pavilion 2026
Single‑channel 4K video, colour, sound, sculptural installation (chocolate and mixed materials).
Incorporated chocolate sculpture originally created by Tiziano Cassar for the Ħamrun Chocolate Festival
Duration: 22:56
Adaptability (video‑only version available)
Photo by Julian Vassallo
Photo by Samuele Cherubini
Photo by Julian Vassallo
Photo by Samuele Cherubini
Photo by Julian Vassallo
Photo by Alexandra Pace
Meet the artist
Charlie Cauchi is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. She holds a BA and an MA in Film Studies from Queen Mary University of London. Her academic contributions focus on small national cinemas, with a particular emphasis on Malta. Her written work includes Titles to Talkies: An Incomplete History of Film Culture & Industry in Malta (2025, Fondazjoni Patrimonju Malti).
Her practice is highly personal, taking a biographical approach. A common preoccupation in her work is runaway productions, often using films shot on location in Malta to untangle identity and representation. She often uses her work to understand and heal fractured familial relationships and to explore identity themes, including gender identity, cultural heritage, and diasporic narratives.
Charlie is currently producing/directing a feature-length documentary, Stratum, which revolves around the groundbreaking archaeological discoveries of Prof. Eleanor Scerri and Prof. Nicholas Vella that are reshaping Malta's prehistoric timeline. She is also co-founder of Rosa Kwir, Malta's first dedicated LGBTQI+ gallery and archive, with artist Romeo Roxman Gatt and Sarah Chircop.
She is the first female artist ever chosen to represent Malta at La Biennale di Venezia, as part of a group show No Need to Sparkle: Experiments in Love and Revolution, commissioned by Arts Council Malta.