A Filipino transwoman in Trump's America

Isabel Sandoval creates an intimate portrayal of undocumented immigrants in Lingua Franca

- RICA AREVALO

If there is one film we are looking forward to this month, it is Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca, which she edited, wrote, co-produced, directed, and starred in about an undocumented transwoman-caregiver in Brooklyn, New York, who is so desperate to become a green cardholder. TBA Studios is premiering the 2019 Chéries-Chéris Grand prize winner and the 2020 Molodist International Film Festival Sunny Bunny Prize in the country soon.

We first noticed Isabel’s work in the 2012 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival entitled Aparisyon. In an email interview with the Manila Bulletin Lifestyle, we asked her about the role of religion in her films. “I had a Jesuit education in high school and a Carolinian education in college,” she said. “Despite my ambivalence to it, Catholicism has made an indelible impression during my formative years and somehow manages to slither into my cinematic excursions by conscious design or otherwise.”

In Lingua Franca, trans best friends Olivia (Isabel) and Trixie (Ivory Aquino) find solace inside a church reminiscing about their happy childhood while speaking in their native tongue. Trixie finds true love while Olivia has given up on love until she meets her employer’s grandson, Alex (Eamon Farren), an outcast of the family.