In Opposition to “A Very Particular Mode of Transness”: Isabel Sandoval On Lingua Franca

The struggles of outer borough working class folks is nothing new to NYC-set dramas. But, in the outsider eyes and busy hands of director/writer/producer/editor/actress Isabel Sandoval, one of the newest auteurs of Filipino cinema — who makes her English-language debut in her adopted city with her third narrative feature Lingua Franca — classic tropes are updated to reflect our current intersectional reality.

The Venice International Film Festival 2019-premiering movie follows live-in caregiver Olivia (Sandoval), who, in the course of looking after an elderly Russian resident of Brighton Beach (Lynn Cohen), becomes romantically entwined with the woman’s ne’er-do-well grandson Alex (Eamon Farren), who labors under his uncle in a meatpacking plant while struggling to get his life back on track. The fact that Olivia is trans and undocumented while blending into her Brooklyn surroundings as cisgender female and assimilated makes the story all the more complicated — not to mention heartbreaking against a political backdrop in which pushing the marginalized back into the shadows and closet has become US government policy.

The day after the film’s August 26th Netflix release, Filmmaker caught up with Sandoval to learn about her project.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.