Drama

Lingua Franca

Written, directed, edited by, and starring Isabel Sandoval, this film brings trans identity, immigration status, care work, and intimacy into one fragile story of a Filipina caregiver in New York.

Director Isabel Sandoval

Year 2019

Country/Region United States, Philippines

Duration 95 min

Language English

Release Date September 4, 2019

Cast

Isabel Sandoval Eamon Farren Lynn Cohen Ivory Aquino

🎥 Review & Analysis

Lingua Franca follows Olivia, an undocumented Filipina trans woman caring for an elderly woman in Brooklyn. The film holds immigration anxiety, care work, racialized intimacy, and gendered vulnerability in the same quiet register without reducing any of them to background.

For FemRes, it adds a queer and trans dimension to migration and care. A caregiver is not only labor power; she is a person shaped by borders, housing precarity, medical systems, intimacy, and the risk of violence.