Lingua Franca. 2019. USA/Philippines. Written and directed by Isabel Sandoval. With Sandoval, Eamon Farren, Ivory Aquino, P.J. Boudousqué, Lev Gorn, Lynn Cohen. DCP. In English, Cebuano, Filipino, Russian. 84 min.
In her third feature film (and her first primarily in English), actor-director Isabel Sandoval plays Olivia, an undocumented Filipina trans woman who works as a caregiver for Olga, an elderly Russian Jewish woman with early dementia living in New York’s Brighton Beach. Fearing capture and deportation by ICE, Olivia splits her meager earnings between her family in the Philippines and an American-born man with whom she hopes to secure permanent residency through a marriage of convenience. When she crosses paths with Alex, Olga’s grandson, after he returns home from mandated rehab in Russia, her plans—and future—are upended by the power of affection and the hidden pains of displacement.