In 1939, more than 1,200 Jews were saved from the horrors of Nazi concentration camps by a man with a list.

While many people know of Oskar Schindler — the hero made famous by Thomas Keneally's novel and Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List — there was another man with another list.

That man was then-Filipino president Manuel Quezon, whose exploits are little known in the Philippines, let alone around the world.

But cinema director Matthew Rosen, a British-born Jew living in the Philippines, was determined that everyone should know about Quezon's selfless act in a "time of darkness".

His efforts are for all to see in Quezon's Game, a low-budget period drama that opened in limited release in Australia recently.

Battle against America

Quezon's Game details the efforts of the charismatic president who aimed to bring 10,000 Jews to the Philippines.

In 1939 his nation was transitioning towards independence and remained effectively under US control, which meant the Americans controlled the number of immigrants allowed in to his country.

Former Philippines president (1935-1944) Manuel L Quezon. ( Supplied: US Library of Congress )

"In the end, his greatest roadblock to bringing Jews to his country was not the Nazis, but the American Government," Rosen said.

With the aid of then-US high commissioner Paul McNutt and an ambitious young US military adviser named Dwight D Eisenhower, Quezon eventually pressured America to allow about 1,200 Jews to immigrate from Germany and Austria.

His ambition to rescue another 9,000 from certain death was abandoned when Japan invaded the Philippines ten hours before the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

Quezon was forced into exile in the US where he died in 1944, having succeeded in rescuing only about 10 per cent of the people he had hoped to save.

Singing in the streets

Rosen has lived and worked in Manila for more than 30 years, but only stumbled upon the story by accident while visiting England with his Filipino wife.

The pair were at a bar mitzvah when Rosen was surprised that his wife knew the words to the Hebrew celebration song Hava Nagila.

"She didn't know it was Hebrew," Rosen said.

"She thought it was a Filipino dialect and she sang it with other children in the streets. Lots of children growing up in Manila sang this growing up in the streets."

Director Matthew Rosen says "everybody should know about this incredible act of humanitarianism". ( Supplied )

Upon returning to the Philippines, Rosen went to a synagogue and asked if they knew why children in Manila had grown up singing a traditional Jewish folk song.

Rosen was taken into a back room that doubled as "a little museum of the history of Jews in the Philippines".

There he was told the story of how Quezon saved the lives of more than a thousand Jews during WWII.

"After I found this out and started researching it, what I found so remarkable was [almost nobody] in the Philippines knew this story," Rosen said.

"It was forgotten in history, and the more I looked into it the more remarkable it was that Quezon not just did this, but that he did this with so much resistance.

"I felt it was something that had to be told because it was something that Filipinos could and should be very proud about.

"Everybody should know about this incredible act of humanitarianism."

Not Schindler's List

Rosen noted the similarities in synopsis between his film and Steven Spielberg's 1993 Oscar-winner.

"The first thing that comes into your head is 'wow, this is the Philippines version of Schindler's List'," Rosen said.

Ben Kingsley and Liam Neeson in 1993's Schindler's List, about a German factory owner who saved Jews from concentration camps. ( Supplied )

"I wanted it to be very different to Schindler's List. I think Schindler's List is a masterpiece and I love the film, but when you watch it it's about the horrors that man can do.

"This film is really about the goodness in people, even within this time of darkness.

"I deliberately wanted to keep it away from Schindler's List [but] when I was trying to push it [to producers] we weren't getting anywhere until I changed my tagline to 'this is the Philippines' Schindler's List'.

"Then everybody wanted it."

A thank you from a Jew

When he was a boy growing up in England in the 1960s and '70s, Rosen would be chased down the street just for being Jewish.

"I went to a Jewish school, and come four o'clock when we all got out we just had to run as fast as you could to the train station because just behind you were the guys from the school down the road, running at you with two-by-fours shouting abuse at you," he said.

"I just thought this was part of the human condition.

"I used to talk about it with my dad and he would say 'well yeah, it's true, it's not easy to live here as a Jew.

"'But remember this is only 15-20 years after the Holocaust, so being chased down the road by guys with two-by-fours was still a better deal than living in Germany.'

"I thought that bigotry was part of the human condition."

He said that when he moved to the Philippines it did not take him long to realise that it was not.

"Since I've been here, there's been no bigotry or distrust towards me for being Jewish. Or being a different race to anybody else," Rosen said.

"One of the reasons I wanted this film to get an international release was it is a 'thank you' from me to the Filipino people.

"It's important that the world knows there is a country, and there is a people, that just has no bigotry."

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