“I wanted to raise the question; why do we need this cheap labour?” Interview with Elias Demetriou on his film ‘Maricel’ at the Manchester Film festival 2026

Maricel follows a Filipino domestic worker in Cyprus caring for an elderly couple who have mixed feelings on her presence in their house. What follows is a profound, thought-provoking story exploring the culture around foreign domestic workers and a deeper look into a broken family. It won the award for ‘Best international feature’ at the 2026 Manchester Film Festival.

Sitting down with director Elias Demitrou, I first asked him what inspired him to create the film, which took root in his own life: “I hired a Filipino maid to take care of my grandmother and when [she] died, she was taking care of my mother and then my father,” Demetriou tells me. “She was a part of our family and talking with her and having conversations with friends of hers in Cyprus made me [want] to talk about these people.”

He goes on to tell me more about the conditions that domestic workers are subjected to. “They work for six or seven days a week with no [maximum] hours. They say they work for eight hours, but [they don’t], they work for 24 hours and they only have one [day] off – Sunday’s where they go to church. Demitrou also hopes that his film will have an impact – “My goal [through this film] is to [raise] their salary a little bit higher.”

The focus on Filipino workers is at the forefront of the film, so I ask more about the logistics of Filipino domestic help in Cyprus. “Almost every other family [has] Filipino maids in their house. [They’re] very cheap, they cost €360 per month so everybody can have a maid.”

The film shows that Maricel not only helps the couple in their home, but also is shown to assist with collecting the couple’s gas supply in the local village shop and helps tend to their field. “Families have a maid just to babysit their kids, [for] gardening, for [taking care] of their parents; anything you can imagine.” We talk about how the Philippines, especially, has a high number of OFWs (Overseas Foreign Workers) in Cyprus, a topic Demetriou is interested in. “I wanted to raise the question; why do we need this cheap labour?”

I ask about the most difficult part when writing the film. “To decide what to exclude is the most difficult part because I had so many stories and [potential story lines] and I could only [do] on.” Initially the setting wasn’t clear cut. “At first it was a story in the city but then I said ‘No, I don’t want to tell a story in the city, I want to tell it in a mountainous village’ because I wanted to narrow the story line to only say some particular things [and] not say everything.”

Whilst a film about foreign domestic workers, it equally explores the dynamics of a broken family. Nikos, the man who employed Maricel, drops his parents into the hands of her without letting them know beforehand, expecting the couple to be alright with the change. Later it’s revealed that their daughter Eleni, who Nikos believes is in London, is actually in Athens and wants nothing to do with her family. 

I ask about how the family dynamic was crucial to the film. “The real reason that [Marika] (Nikos’ mother) accepts and wants [Maricel] back is because she replaced her [absent] daughter, Eleni. I think it was crucial to have a backstory like this and not just a straightforward [one].

Demitrou previously made a film called ‘Fish n’ Chips’ which follows a Greek-Cypriot immigrant in London who returns to Cyprus to open his own fish-and-chip shop. I ask about why the subject matter of immigrants is important in both ‘Maricel’ and ‘Fish n’ Chips’. “I like to speak about people who [have] no voice.” 

The subject matter of ‘Fish n’ Chips, especially, hit close to home for him. “My father was born in London, [his parents] were Cypriot immigrants and I have all these stories from our relatives [in London]. I wanted to [tell] this story because what happens to them is that they leave their country and they believe when they go back it will be the same country, but it is [not] because [when] you leave your country, [it changes].” 

“When you go back, you are again a foreigner, you don’t have a country because you left and you don’t belong [there] any more.”

I ask about any upcoming films and he says he has one in the works – “It’s about a family who [go] on a trip to mountainous Cyprus or Greece, I don’t know yet, for skiing. It’s an [upper-class] family like the one in [Maricel] and they start to quarrel. The whole film will be shot in the car from the beginning to the end”. Following on the themes of family drama, he tells me it will be similar to the French film Force Majeure. “Let’s say a ‘weekend gone wrong’ film, but very, very, very wrong.”