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Lingua Franca by Isabel Sandoval
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Lingua Franca
by Isabel Sandoval

In this beguiling drama, an undocumented Filipina immigrant paranoid about deportation works as a caregiver to a Russian-Jewish grandmother in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. When the American man she’s secretly paying for a green card marriage backs out, she becomes involved with a slaughterhouse worker who is unaware that she’s transgender.

Original Title: Lingua Franca
Countries: USA
Year: 2019
Ratio: 1.85:1
Sound: 5.1
Length: 95 min
Language: English, Tagalog, Russian
Festivals & Awards
2022
  • Sinema Transtopia
2020
  • Festival International du Film de Mons – International Competition
  • Palm Springs Film Festival
  • Melbourne Queer Film Festival
2019
  • Venice Days – International Competition
  • BFI London Film Festival – International Competition
  • International Film Festival of India Goa – World Panorama
  • Busan International Film Festival
  • Hamburg International Film Festival
  • Thessaloniki Film Festival
  • American Film Festival Wroclaw – Competition
  • Everybody’s Perfect LGBT Film Festival
About Director
Isabel Sandoval

Isabel is a New York-based filmmaker whom The Museum of Modern Art--citing her "muted, serene aesthetic"--has recognized as a "rarity among the young generation of Filipino filmmakers". She has produced, written and directed three full-length features, including "Señorita" (2011), which premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland and was nominated for Best Picture by the Young Critics Circle of the Philippines. "Señorita" also won the Emerging Director Award at the 2012 Asian-American International Film Festival. Her second feature film, "Apparition" (2012), a period drama about cloistered Filipino nuns during the Marcos regime, was widely acclaimed in its Philippine theatrical release. After competing at the Busan International Film Festival, it won a number of international awards, including the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NetPAC) Award at the 2012 Hawaii International Film Festival as well as the Audience Award at the 2013 Deauville Asian Film Festival in France. Apparition had a week-long theatrical run at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2013 and was showcased again in a 2017 film series "A New Golden Age: Contemporary Philippine Cinema". Her third feature, "Lingua Franca", an immigration drama set in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, stars Eamon Farren ("Twin Peaks: The Return", "The Witcher"), Lev Gorn ("The Americans") and Lynn Cohen ("The Hunger Games", "Sex and the City"). It has received support from IFP, SFFILM, Frameline, the New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), New York Foundation for the Arts and the Tribeca Film Institute. In March 2017, she was part of the SXSW 2017 panel "The Future is Female: Parity Now" alongside acclaimed filmmakers Bette Gordon and Nanfu Wang. Isabel has a MBA from the New York University Stern School of Business and has a background in CPG brand management.

FILMOGRAPHY
  • Lingua Franca – 2019
  • Apparition – 2012
  • Señorita – 2011
  • Señorita – 2009 – Short film
  • Ritwal – 2004 – Short film
Cast & Crew
Cast

Isabel Sandoval
Eamon Farren
Ivory Aquino
PJ Boudousque
Lev Gorn
Lynn Cohen

Crew

Screenwriter: Isabel Sandoval
DOP: Isaac Banks
Editor: Isabel Sandoval
Costume Design: Clint Ramos
Sound Design: Albert Michael M. Idioma
Composer: Teresa Barrozo
Production Design: Clint Ramos
Executive Producers: Jerome Kerkman, Raymond Francisco, Samuel S. Verzosa, Fernando Ortigas, E. A. Rocha, Vincent R. Nebrida, Sarah Brennan Kolb, Nicole Cosgrove, Romulo Aromin Jr., Gigi Dement
Producers: Jhett Tolentino, Carlo Velayo, Darlene Catly Malimas, Isabel Sandoval
World Sales: Luxbox

“As a breakthrough symbol of progress in trans visibility at major film festivals, Sandoval's third feature is worth celebrating.”
“It’s a picture which taps into an angle of the migrant experience – the precarious balance of a life made in a country whose citizens are encouraged to view immigrants as enemies – which is depressingly timely.”
“The content of the film is important despite this little balanced nature, if only to show the audience what it really means to be an illegal immigrant somewhere to perch and to fight for every bit of hope for a normal life.”
“Isabel Sandoval thus constructs an extraordinarily fluid film in which the various components of discourse dissolve into one another with incredible suggestion. And she delivers a film very hard to define which has a very strong sensuality, very feminine, with placidity and soft ondulations.”