Her early life

Juliet Ellis grew up in Sheffield, a city whose influence hums through her work in quiet and unexpected ways. Growing up in a mixed-heritage family in the North of England, Ellis’s creative instincts were formed in an environment of contrasts and complexities. Raised in a household where her father was a world champion body builder and her brother followed a similar path – becoming a cage fighter – her own world took a different turn, seeing her become involved in Sheffield’s buzzing creative scene. Starting out as a club kid, Ellis became a regular at Jive Turkey – the legendary electro, soul and jazz funk night that rivalled Manchester’s Hacienda. She then spent a long period active in the Manchester theatre community, working on shows at HOME and Contact, before eventually relocating to New York.

In front of the camera

Before she was behind the camera or directing live performance, Ellis was an actor. Her early years were spent on stage and screen, building a deep understanding of performance from the inside out, while appearing in iconic shows like Eastenders, Scott and Bailey and Shane Meadows-directed The Virtues. That experience – of being in front of the lens, of inhabiting character, of using the body as a tool for expression – feeds directly into the work she makes now. Performance still sits at the heart of her practice but Ellis doesn’t stop at acting – she writes, directs, edits and builds, exploring what happens when all those roles blur.

Across forms and disciplines

Ellis’s work is best described as interdisciplinary but even that feels too neat a label. Her work has evolved from theatrical performance to becoming a film director, though some of the themes Ellis explores resonate through her work. Take Bro 9 for example – where Ellis examines masculinity and cultural identity or her direction of Worlds Apart by Mick Martin, which explored cultural displacement and personal history through immersive storytelling.

Her first feature film Ruby – a haunting, semi-autobiographical work exploring the aftershocks of trauma – won Best Drama at the Berlin Independent Film Festival and the Fellini Award at Austin Arthouse Film Festival. It’s a film about survival and memory, told with boldness and deep emotional honesty.

Whether film, performance, or something in between, Ellis works from the body outwards. Her art is physical, unafraid of discomfort and vulnerability. Instead, she leans into both, treating them as spaces for transformation.

Collaboration as method

Though her work often begins with personal experience, Ellis doesn’t make in isolation. Collaboration is built into her process and she often brings together creatives across film, sound, dance and design to realise her vision. She’s worked closely with musician LoneLady on a series of music videos that blur the line between music, performance and moving image, and collaborated with the British-Nigerian composer and musician Nwando Ebizie and choreographer Harriet Waghorn, to direct Somewhere – a short film which premiered on Sky Arts.

For A Symphony of Flesh and Bones, Ellis has assembled a diverse creative team – each member bringing their own expertise to shape a work that spans film, live performance, installation and sound design. This is where her work thrives – in the gaps between disciplines, where form can be pushed and stories can be told in new ways.

A meditative state

As well as being an interdisciplinary artist, Ellis is a practicing Buddhist and teaches meditation in her adopted home of New York. Her Buddhist practice is one of the inspirations for her new work for the 2025 edition of Manchester International Festival – which asks questions about our bodies, meaning and impermanence.

A Symphony of Flesh and Bones

Commissioned for MIF25, A Symphony of Flesh and Bones is Juliet Ellis’s most ambitious work to date. Combining film, voice, physical performance and sound, it’s a deeply personal exploration of the concept of selfhood, embodiment and memory.

Drawing deeply from her personal history, Ellis centres the piece on her father, Lloyd – a world champion bodybuilder – and her brother, Anthony, a former cage fighter. Exploring the universal through the personal, through their stories she examines how we sculpt our bodies as both sanctuary and armour – and how the passage of time reshapes these constructs

A Symphony of Flesh and Bones reinterprets what film can do beyond the framework of the screen, what the self can be beyond the framework of the body. Both intimate and expansive, like much of her work, it doesn’t fit easily into a box. It asks to be felt as much as seen.

A Symphony of Flesh and Bones runs from 10-13 July at Aviva Studios as part of Manchester International Festival 2025.