It tells of the journey of farmer and former soldier Oscar Ramirez, played by veteran stage actor Jake Macapagal, and his young family to seek a better life, from the rice terraces in the rural north of the country to the chaos of Manila.
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.
Ellis said the story was inspired by a scene he witnessed while visiting the Philippines. Two employees of an armored truck company, wearing 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 the Philippine language of 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 "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 that 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's a story about taking chances and making desperate choices to survive.
