ISABEL SANDOVAL

SPECIAL TRANSLATIONS TRAILBLAZER AWARD RETROSPECTIVE SCREENING

SAT MAY 6 | 6:00 PM | ARK LODGE CINEMAS
IN PERSON ONLY

This year we are honoring Isabel Sandoval with our inaugural TRANSlations Trailblazer Award, Join TRANSlations as we screen our 2020 Opening Night Film LINGUA FRANCA for the first time in person!

LINGUA FRANCA
Isabel Sandoval; 2019; USA/Philippines; 95 min
English, Tagalog, and Russian with English subtitles

In this engrossing drama, undocumented Olivia spends her days taking care of Olga, a Russian-Jewish grandmother in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. When the man she’s secretly paying for a green-card marriage backs out, she becomes involved with Olga’s grandson Alex, a handsome but troubled young man who doesn’t realize she is trans. The winsome Olivia, played by director Isabel Sandoval, draws viewers into this story of love and survival as a transgender woman trying to live her life with joy and strength. 

Filmmaker Isabel Sandoval will join us for a post-screening Q&A.

This film contains the following content warnings:
NUDITY, SMOKING, EXPLICIT SEXUAL SITUATIONS

Plays with:

SHANGRI-LA

Isabel Sandoval; 2021; USA; 10 min.

It’s California, during the Great Depression. A woman is confiding her most intimate thoughts in a church confessional, while the man on the other side listens silently and intently. But this is no ordinary religious ritual seeking salvation. The woman — a second generation Filipino farmhand — is rapt in roleplay reverie, her sensuous words aimed at her white American lover, during a historic period when such interracial relationships were forbidden by state law. The confession box transforms into a romantic time machine, ecstatic and melancholic, traveling into alternate futures. She manifests as multiple, dazzling women, and they can love freely.