Simon Ellis

Simon Ellis is a British film director.

Ellis' short films have received many awards, including the International Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Short Film at BIFA, and BAFTA and European Academy Award nominations. Working in fiction, animation, hybrid documentary and interactive, his work been presented collectively in dedicated retrospective shows at numerous international film festivals. He continues to attend festivals as either filmmaker or juror and has mentored short film directors in both the UK and overseas.

Soft, commissioned by Film 4 and UK Film Council's Cinema Extreme scheme won thirty-eight festival prizes including the International Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards, and both BAFTA and European Film Awards nominations.

The films Telling Lies and Soft both feature on the Cinema 16 DVD collection, on 'British Short Films' and 'World Short Films', respectively. Alongside short films by Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro, Mike Leigh, Lynne Ramsay and many others, Ellis is the only director to feature twice in the series.

In a major collaboration with UK beatboxing champion and loop pedal artist The Petebox, Ellis directed a video for every track from the album Future Loops for an innovative dual CD/DVD album campaign. Each video is a single-take documentary of the actual live recordings, initially released virally in chronological album order via YouTube, amassing millions of views. He has also directed two environmental binaural recording documentaries with Swimming.

The multi-narrative, interactive anti-knife crime campaign films Choose a Different Ending and Who Killed Deon, which won 60+ awards collectively, including several golds and the inaugural Grand Prix for Good at the Cannes Lions, plus golds at the Clio Awards, and the British Television Advertising Awards. Ellis was bestowed with the Young Director Award for Best European Web Film for Choose a Different Ending and Who Killed Deon was ranked 'most awarded TV campaign in the world' by Campaign magazine in January 2012.

The success of these campaigns saw Ellis direct further short films in single-take format for both the Scottish Police Federation and the National Police of Ukraine.