Filipinos headline 3 films nominated for Oscars

Briton Sean Ellis, second from left, writer-director of ‘Metro Manila’ – Britain’s nominee to the Oscar Awards’ best foreign language film, poses with his actors, from left, Jake Macapagal, John Arcilla and Althea Vega, prior to the premier screening at a cinema in Taguig City on October 3. AP

Filipinos get top billing in three foreign language film nominees in no less than the prestigious Academy Awards.

Britain’s nominee as best foreign language film for the Oscars features an all-Filipino cast and a story that traces the sacrifices and hopes of an impoverished family from the countryside that tries its luck in the dark and squalid ghettos of Manila.

“Metro Manila,” written and directed by Briton Sean Ellis, is one of three foreign language films delving into the lives of Filipinos which are nominated in the best foreign language category for next year’s Oscars.

The Philippines’ nominee “Transit” focuses on the struggles of migrant Filipino workers in Israel, while Singapore’s entry “Ilo Ilo” is about a Filipino nanny who works for a Singaporean family.

The US film academy will select a long list of finalists in January, trim it down to five finalists in February and announce the winners in March.

“I thought it was a very beautiful and poetic story about family and about sacrifice and about hope,” Ellis said of his movie, which won an audience award at the recent Sundance Film Festival. The movie premiered in Manila last week and opens in Philippine cinemas on Wednesday.

It tells of the journey of farmer and former soldier Oscar Ramirez, played by veteran stage actor Jake Macapagal, and his young family, from the rice terraces in the rural north of the country to the chaos of Manila to seek a better life.

In the city, they fall prey to various characters and are forced out of desperation to make difficult choices. Oscar’s wife, Mai, played by film actress Althea Vega, is forced to become a bar girl to feed her two young children.

Oscar manages to land a job as a driver for an armored truck company and is befriended by Ong, his senior officer. Ong, played by John Arcilla, is helpful and jolly, but it becomes clear he had been waiting for someone naive and trusting like Oscar to come along.

Disturbing scene

Ellis said the story was inspired by a scene he witnessed while visiting the Philippines. Two employees of an armored truck company, in bulletproof jackets and helmets, and lugging M16 rifles, were screaming at each other. It ended with one of them kicking the truck before they both got in and drove off.

He said the scene remained with him when he returned to Britain and he kept on wondering what they were arguing about. That led him to develop a 20-page synopsis. He then flew to Los Angeles to flesh out the script with his friend Frank E. Flowers.

The script was in English, but Ellis allowed the actors to translate their lines into Tagalog.

Ellis said it was strange to direct a movie in a language he could not understand, but for only “about five seconds, because then you start to see the performance and you’re not worried about the words they’re saying, you trust them to say the words that are in the script.”

Macapagal, 47, who spent a decade in Europe working in the musical stage production “Miss Saigon,” said the role was “challenging but not very far from every Filipino’s plight.” Macapagal said he could easily relate to Oscar’s life because he does not come from a privileged background.

Manila’s dark side has been explored in several films by Filipino directors, including the classic 1975 film “Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Light)” by the late award-wining director Lino Brocka, and more recently, by noted director Brillante Mendoza.

“There’s a texture in our city that we don’t normally see because there are times we numb ourselves to the poverty,” Macapagal said, adding Ellis “looks at things you don’t normally look at.”

Arcilla said the poverty shown in the movie can be found in slums in many countries. “For me, it’s not really about poverty, its more on human survival and more on human sacrifice,” he said.

Vega, 25, said it was a story about taking chances and making desperate choices to survive.