We are pleased to welcome director Sean Ellis, actor Jake Macapagal and composer Robin Foster for this special preview of Metro Manila followed by a post-screening Q&A. The Q&A will be chaired by Andy Willis, Reader in Film Studies at the University of Salford.
Written and Directed by Sean Ellis (The Broken, Cashback, Academy Award Nominee for his short Cashback) Metro Manila won the Audience Award for World Cinema at Sundance Film Festival in 2013.
Seeking a better life, Oscar Ramirez and his family move from the poverty stricken rice fields of the Northern Philippine mountain ranges and journey towards the capital mega city of Manila. Upon arriving in the big city it isn’t long before they fall foul of various inhabitants whose manipulative ways are a daily part of city survival. Oscar lands a job as a driver for an armoured truck company and is befriended by Ong, his senior officer. Before long it becomes apparent that Ong has been planning the arrival of someone just like Oscar for a while.
Oscar-nominated director Sean Ellis started taking pictures when he was just 11. After training as a still life photographer he moved to London from Brighton in 1994. Applying his knowledge of the still life and using it to light fashion models Ellis became one of the new generation of fashion photographers most sought after in the late nineties. To date he has written and directed three short films: Left Turn (2001), a dark psychological horror film; Cashback (2004), a visually rich black comedy that won the top award at over fifteen international film festivals, including the prestigious Chicago and Tribeca Film Festivals and was also nominated for a 2006 Academy Award®; Voyage D’Affaires (2008), was shown at the Hamptons Film Festival, the Chicago Film Festival and was nominated for a 2008 British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) award and won best film at the 2010 Fuji Short Film competition. Ellis’s first feature film was born from the short film of the same name, Cashback (2006), and includes the original short film within it. His second feature film, the psychological thriller, The Broken (2008), stars Lena Headey (300, The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Oscar-nominated actor Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Burn After Reading) and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008.
Metro Manila is released in the UK from Friday 20 September.
With thanks to Independent Film Company.
This event forms part of BAFTA’s UK-wide learning and events programme.
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