EMER GENCE

The actress and filmmaker ISABEL SANDOVAL on her fascination with dark histories, using cinema as a passport, and the whirlwind of a year that was 2023.

- JASON TAN LIWAG.

The last time Isabel Sandoval was at QCinema in 2019, her third feature Lingua Franca had just premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. But in the last four years, she has established herself as not only a filmmaker but also as a champion of cinema.

From writing briefly about Lino Brocka's Insiang for the Criterion Collection to introducing Mike de Leon's In the Blink of an Eye for his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Sandoval's passion for cinema is at the center of what makes her special.

Now, she returns to QCinema for the inaugural edition of the QCinema Project Market as a different woman than when she last arrived, with a project that seems emblematic of all the transformations that have happened between these two visits: Underworld. Though she thinks that they're going to officially switch the title to Moonglow. "It really captures more of the tone that I'm trying to go with [for] the film," she says excitedly.

She brings us into the story immediately: Moonglow follows a jaded female police detective at the heart of 1970s Manila whose life grows complicated when she is tasked to solve a crime that, unbeknown to the rest of the police force, she orchestrated. Described by Sandoval as "a detective thriller and crime noir by the way of In the Mood For Love," Moonglow feels like an evolution in ambition and magnitude.

"My emergent sensibility is the marriage of themes with political underpinnings with a style that is lyrical, poetic, visually lush, and sensuous," says Sandoval. "I wanna take that style to a grander narrative, in a more ambitious production in terms of its scale."