Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Actor, Musician
Born in the Philippines and brought up in England between the ages of 1-6 and 12-21, Khairil has been in love with the movies since he first saw 'Back to the Future' and discovered filmmaking during the mid-90's via Martin Scorcese, John Woo and the numerous indie filmmakers that appeared at the time such as Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.
With no film course available in his school, Khairil instead took up drama during his high school years and began handing in screenplays instead of essays in his English Language classes. Later, in university, Khairil joined the CUSU drama society where he wrote two plays. The first was a re-write of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and the second a re-vamp of “Alice In Wonderland”, taking the much loved story and placing it within the setting of a university halls of residence. During this time he also acted whenever he could and even did minor stunt work on a low-budget Xena-style action film (that will, he hopes, will never see the light of day).
‘Ciplak’ was Khairil’s first attempt at a feature length film and was shot on a shoestring budget of only RM10,000 (RM8,500 of which was spent on the camera) during the weekends whilst he was still working in an advertising company as a copywriter. The film was released by Aflam Sdn Bhd and distributed by Golden Screen Cinemas in the GSC International Screens in
Prior to 'Ciplak', Khairil has written, directed & edited two short films: the first, 'Nicotine', was invited to the Singapore International Film Festival in 2005 and centered on the addictive effects of cigarettes (an addiction he is all too aware of); the second, 'Some Like It White', was broadcast on the TV show 'Shortcuts' on Astro Prima and centered on a guy trying to pick up a girl who only dates Caucasians (as you can imagine, it was heavily censored for television). Both short films premiered at the KSFM shorts. His most recent short film, 'Breaking Up Is Hard To Do', was Khairil's first attempt at loose, improvised comedy which was well received when it premiered at the IFilmIndie 'The Gathering' event at KLPac.
He has also directed and edited music videos for underground bands such as One Buck Short, Liang, Dragon Red, Soft Touch and Azizi. His recent acting credits (apart from ‘Ciplak’) include the short film 'Seeing Things' and the feature film 'Wrath' directed by Tony Pietra, a number of roles in episodes of 'Dark City' and a supporting role in feature film 'Andai' directed by Johan John.
Apart from filmmaking, Khairil also plays music in blues rock band Rollin' Sixers as well as occasionally performing solo at acoustic guitar gigs. He also freelances for a number of magazines such as music magazine ROTTW.
In 2007, Khairil directed 4 episodes of the TV series ‘
