Academy Award nominee finds his Oscar in Manila

On holiday in the Philippines he observed an argument between two armoured truck personnel and immediately began concocting a script. The idea became Metro Manila, a film shot in the Philippines’ capital in a foreign language with a cast who translated their lines as they went along.

Ellis is the 43-year-old Brighton lad who received an Oscar nomination in 2005 for his short Cashback. That project was eventually extended into a feature, which was followed by The Broken, a tale of doppelgangers, parallel worlds and creeping evil starring Huddersfield-born Lena Headey.

Then came Metro Manila, the story of a rural farmer, Oscar, who moves his family to the big city in search of a better life.

Oscar (Jake Macapagal) soon finds a job with an armoured truck company. But this is one city whose streets are most definitely not paved with gold...

“I guess I wanted to make a foreign film,” he says when asked why anyone would choose to shoot a movie in a tongue they do not speak.

“I was not really compelled to make a film on these shores and I felt that Manila was a place I’d not really seen on the cinema screen. It felt very exotic and exciting.”

It is certainly that. As well as being a powerful domestic drama and romance, Metro Manila is also a thriller that rations its scenes of violence and shock.

What’s more, it gives international cinema a new star in Jake Macapagal.

Finding his leading man was down to chance.

Ellis landed in Manila and met with Celine Lopez, his sole contact in the city. She in turn introduced him to Macapagal, a theatre actor who would assist with casting.

“I was explaining to Jake the idea of the film and what kind of cast we were looking for. My phone was buzzing on the table. I looked at it and it was Celine, who was sitting next to me. She said ‘Doesn’t he look like the sort of person who would be Oscar?’ I wrote back and said ‘Yes, he does. Can he act?’

“That afternoon we saw him on camera suddenly become this completely different person to the one we’d been talking to over breakfast. He became Oscar.

“We went out to dinner that night and I said ‘Would you be the leading man in the film?’ and he was a bit shocked. I said ‘This is going to be a long journey. Will you be prepared to take it with me?’ He spent at least two minutes looking down like this and then he went ‘Yeah’. It was the longest two minutes ever!”

Clearly Ellis deliberately avoids repeating himself. But by opting for a project in a different language isn’t he out of his comfort zone?

He smiles.

“I don’t think there is a comfort zone if you’re making a film. It’s one of those very insecure places where you’re hoping that at the end of it you’ll have something that is at least coherent.”

Although he is an Academy Award nominated movie director, with a couple of seriously well received films behind him, it wasn’t always on the cards that Ellis would make much of his professional career.

“When I was at school my report said ‘Only does well when he’s interested in the subject.’ When I’m making a film I have to be completely obsessed about the subject. That’s pretty much how I live my life now.”

On release now.