Lingua Franca
Olivia, an undocumented Filipino transwoman, works as a caregiver to Olga, an elderly Russian woman, in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. When Olivia runs out of options to attain legal status in the US, she becomes romantically involved with Alex, Olga's adult grandson, in the pursuit of a marriage-based green card.
Isabel Sandoval
Isabel Sandoval
Casts & Crew
Isabel Sandoval
Lynn Cohen
Eamon Farren
Lev Gorn
Ivory Aquino
P.J. Boudousqué
Also Directed by Isabel Sandoval
Laura, a transgendered woman, is a reformed sex worker living a quiet life in the country. But she can't seem to shake off the lure of the big city. A consummate actress, she manages leads a double life but as her lies begin to unravel, will she be able to keep her two worlds separate?
Philippines, 1570, the early years of the Spanish colonial regime. Andres, a Spanish conquistador, arrives in the colonial capital of Cebu and he’s given the ownership of a farming estate seized by the Crown. The previous owner, Marta, a babaylan (native priestess) who has converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution, is now forced to manage the estate for him.
Wanting to quit sex work in Manila and start a new life, Donna, a transgender woman, gets her chance when an old friend asks Donna to look after her 12-year-old son Tomas while she works overseas for a year. Donna moves to a small town to look after Tomas only to find out that the town mayor who is seeking re-election is a crony of one of her regular clients back in Manila. In her efforts to break away from her past, she becomes entangled in the town’s local politics and ends up leading a double life.
We’re in 1971, and the largest morbid symptom around is Ferdinand Marcos’s play for greater political power, which occurs off-screen. But little of the outside world impinges on Adoration, a convent set in secluded woods outside Manila, which sees itself as a physical and spiritual sanctuary. We explore this closed world, riven by manias and secrets, through the eyes of Sister Lourdes, a newly arrived novice. She has hardly settled in before she learns that her activist brother is missing, presumed arrested... She finds ways to venture out to Manila, where a terrible fate awaits her. Apparition obviously reflects the fact that the Philippines is a predominantly Catholic nation, thanks to its years as a Spanish colony, but Sandoval is less interested in questions of faith than in the issue of good governance. Adoration’s Mother Superior, Ruth, knows much more about what’s going on in the outside world than she lets on. Is she a kind of Marcos, imposing her own kind of martial law?