MANILA, Philippines—For an actor who only stands 4 feet and 2 and a half inches, 11-year-old Martin de los Santos stands tall.

After all, this wee kid walked the red carpet at the Berlin International Film Festival alongside Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams for Lukas Moodysson’s “Mammoth” last year.

He was among the Filipino actors, along with Marife Necesito, Jan David Nicdao, Maria Esmeralda del Carmen and Perry Dizon, who were cast in the international film.

Martin recalls the “blinding” flash of the paparazzi’s cameras.

“Ang dami nila,” he says of the numerous photographers lined up in front of them. “My favorite part was when they asked me to sign the poster.”

He also got the chance to chat with Bernal and Williams. “They told me they want to visit the Philippines soon. Michelle was supposed to shoot here but her husband (Heath Ledger) passed away.”

Only 8 then, Martin got the chance to travel to Europe, for the two-week shoot in Sweden and the week-long holiday in France. “The producers took us to Paris as a special treat.”

Shooting the international film was “cool,” he recounts. “Our standby area was one big RV (recreational vehicle), with its own toilet, bedroom, dining room. They built a hospital in a studio. It was amazing.”

The production also followed strict working hours, he says. In stark contrast, he often had to rough it on the sets of local movies.

For the Cinema One entry, Sigfried Barros Sanchez’s “Tsardyer,” he had to run in a rainforest barefoot.

“There were lots of ants and other insects. It was muddy. I even fell down a slippery slope,” he looks back.

Martin says he remained focused on the set by “reading the script incessantly.”

The director is all praise for the pint-sized actor, a Grade 5 student at the Sto. Niño the Shepherd School in Pasig. “He doesn’t speak a word of Tausug, but he learned quickly to play a boy whose job is to charge the cell phones of kidnap-for-ransom gangs.”

A book on prehistoric life was his mom’s main tool in sharpening his memory. “When I was two, she would call out the name of a dinosaur and I would point at its picture in a book. When I was three, I watched ‘Walking With Monsters’ on BBC.”

Cinema One runs from Nov. 10 to 16 at the cineplex of the Edsa Shangri-La Plaza Mall.