Lingua Franca: Isabel Sandoval on the 'Privilege of Not Being White'
In partnership with Ava Duvernay’s ‘Array Now’, Mercado Vicente’s founder spoke to Sandoval about her groundbreaking new film.
Illustration by Venazir Martinez
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
Isabel Sandoval’s “Lingua Franca” is breaking down barriers for the Filipinx community’s most marginalized voices.
“Lingua Franca,” the first film in competition by a Filipino director in the British Film Institute’s 63-year history, explores the life of Olivia, an undocumented transgender Filipina woman living in Brooklyn and tackling issues of identity, civil rights and immigration.
The film is Sandoval’s third and a landmark for the writer-director. With “Lingua Franca,” Sandoval became the first trans woman of color to write, direct, and headline a film at the Venice Film Festival.
“With ‘Lingua Franca’ Sandoval became the first trans woman of color to write, direct, and headline a film at the Venice Film Festival.”
“It’s only when the privilege of not being white or not being cis is taken away from you [that] seeing its absence forms your storytelling and your perception,” Sandoval told Mercado Vicente’s founder, Jan Vincent Gonzales, in an interview.
Mercado Vicente felt strongly about sharing the film’s story with our community because we stand for Filipinx creatives whose voices are not normally heard in mainstream media. We push for highlighting the experiences of marginalized voices in our community, especially those of queer folx and womxn.
In our very first STORIES featuring a full length film, Mercado Vicente partnered with ARRAY NOW, Ava Duvernay’s production company that focuses on the work of people of color and women of all kinds. We asked our artists to interpret “Lingua Franca” by creating exclusive imagery, which can be seen throughout this article.
Here, Mercado Vicente’s Gonzales interviews Sandoval about “Lingua Franca,” intersectionality’s complexities, and what she hopes younger generations take away from the film.
Jan Vincent Gonzales: How did you come up with “Lingua Franca?”
Isabel Sandoval: “Lingua Franca” is my third feature film… but the first film that I did after my gender transition and my first to be set in and produced in the U.S., even though I’ve lived in the U.S. for almost fifteen years. I’ve come to realize that I’m [grappling] with these stories of women with secrets who are either dispossessed or marginalized who are forced upon very personal conflicts within a broad, larger, sociopolitical context.
I had also just completed my gender transition when I started writing “Lingua Franca.” About a year after, Trump got elected to the White House…. As with a lot of minorities and immigrants and queer people, [I felt] a lot of anxiety and vulnerability and uncertainty during those first few months and [I] channeled that to the mood and temperament of “Lingua Franca.”
Illustration by Geneva Garcia
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
JVG: The election itself meant so many different things for immigrants, for marginalized communities, especially for queer people. We’re seeing that more and more as things keep unfolding with the administration. Is “Lingua Franca” completely fictional or partly autobiographical?
IS: My story and Olivia’s, the main character’s, are similar in that we’re both Filipina trans women immigrants living in Brooklyn. I’m lucky to say that I have papers. The rest, although it is fictional, is still emotionally truthful in terms of my state of mind during the time that the story of “Lingua Franca” was set.The conversations I had with my mom were the same [as] Olivia has with her mother. The story did not actually happen, but it could very well have happened.
Illustration by Eutalia de la Paz
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
JVG: Olivia is a woman who is set to marry a man for a green card. That’s so common in the Filipino-American community. My mother was part of that situation in order to secure staying here in terms of immigration.
What do you want this film to mean for Filipinos, for trans people and for queer people?
IS: The fact that it’s a film that’s authored, both in front of and behind the camera, by a Filipino person and someone who is also trans, we should really seize the moment and assert our voice and our identity in the media landscape in the U.S. Also, I’m not just representing my community, but I’m inserting my own new, idiosyncratic voice and identity as an artist and filmmaker. As a minority filmmaker, as a woman, an immigrant, a queer person, it’s very easy to pigeonhole me and put me in a box. I think we should really take these projects as opportunities not just to transcend new representation and visibility, but to say that I also have something distinctive and singular to say. We embrace our otherness not just for its own sake, but to show the uniqueness of our voice and our aesthetic. That is how I think we establish a long-term career as art makers and storytellers in this industry.
“I think we should really take these projects as opportunities not just to transcend new representation and visibility, but to say that I also have something distinctive and singular to say.”
Illustration by Kristina Corre
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
JVG: One of the biggest things that we push for is being able to show voices that we haven’t been able to see in the media. I think what Ava Duvernay and Array are doing to push that is amazing.
In your Balitang America interview, you mentioned something about not portraying immigrants as victims and being able to see them as people with dignity. Can you talk more about that?
IS: On paper, “Lingua Franca” is about the burgeoning emotional attachment and relationship between this trans woman, Olivia, and this Russian-Jewish man, Alex.But I’m using that to take it to a surprising and unexpected emotional terrain to be about, ultimately, the resilience and survival of someone like Olivia.
The film pointedly opens and closes with Olivia’s voice over montages of imagery and speech. And by speech I mean, the voice-over is in Cebuano, which is my native tongue. So it’s an assertion of identity and strong determination by a foreigner.
“I just wanted to have a story that exists within the american landscape, within contemporary America, where the main protagonist is this Filipino trans woman and the supporting characters are these white, cis-gender Americans."
America occupied Filipino popular consciousness as the ultimate dream — the American dream. It’s very much ingrained in us as we’re young that this is the ultimate destination for us to work towards so that we can prosper and achieve a comfortable, successful, happy life.
I just wanted to have a story that exists within the American landscape, within contemporary America, where the main protagonist is this Filipino trans woman and the supporting characters are these white, cis-gender Americans. It is us taking our claim as individual, self-determining beings, not only in the landscape of America but also in media and popular culture.
Illustration by Clarisse Provido
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
JVG: It’s centering us and not centering them. I think that’s what’s important here and something I connect with so easily.
My mom married a white man and she’s been with him for fifteen years. It’s something I always go back and forth with her on like, “Why is it that we value his opinions more than ours? Why are we the secondary characters?”
I love what you’re saying about being able to center our voices.
IS: “Lingua Franca” is an elusive and tricky film in that it doesn't traffic simple, big, easy, straightforward emotions. That’s why some people might not get the film or get it completely because it deals with more subtle, complex, quiet emotions. It’s not a film that makes you feel something instantaneously or in an overwhelming way so that you could tweet about it right after you finish the movie.
It’s a movie that I want you to sit with [so] that its being and point of view marinate. I want people to realize that we live in a complex reality. The times that we live in are thorny and ambivalent and we need to think more deeply and critically about the world that we live in and about characters like Olivia.
Illustration by Eutalia de la Paz
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
Ilustration by Mishel An Valenton
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
JVG: To be able to have films that are so easily digestible is symptomatic of a far-too-familiar general public that doesn’t necessarily understand complexities. Being a person of color, a queer person, a trans person: These are the realities and the dimensions of thought that we always have to live through. We don’t have the option to be easily understood, much like these films. I think “Lingua Franca” is being unapologetically not simplistic in a way because we are multidimensional people — and therefore, multidimensional characters.
IS: My intention is not to give easy answers to weighty, heavy issues. I want to initiate interrogation internally within yourselves. Some people have expressed how they were impressed with how fleshed out and three-dimensional the depiction of Olivia is and the intersection of power, grace, gender, and how I tackle these things in the film.
“And it’s only when the privilege of not being white or not being cis is taken away from you [that] seeing its absence forms your storytelling and your perception.”
For me, it comes naturally and organically because I live in a society in [which] I’m conscious and cognizant of those things because it’s a privilege that I don’t have.
And it’s only when the privilege of not being white or not being cis is taken away from you [that] seeing its absence forms your storytelling and your perception.
Illustration by TG Villanueva
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
JVG: I’s so powerful what you said having the privilege of not being white. There’s so much dimension to our story. Despite all of the strife that we have to deal with — as immigrants, as people of color, as queer people, I feel like it deepens our character even further and I love that.
I love you saying that there’s privilege in not being white.
One of the biggest things we push for with MERCADO is what this means for younger generations, the generations that will take these films and this art further. What do you have to say for young, queer, Filipinx creatives and filmmakers who are watching “Lingua Franca” or your other works?
IS: This is a very remarkable, cultural and political moment where we are compelled to embrace our sense of otherness, but in an inspiring and involving way. We should seize this opportunity to do that in our own art; to find out what it means to make unique, distinct and singular [bodies of art] and not rely on formulas; and to push ourselves creatively in advancing whatever art form that we express ourselves.
I’ve embraced my otherness, both in my life and in my art, and see that as a source of strength and power in my creative work.
Watch the ‘Lingua Franca’ trailer here
Illustration by Clarisse Provido
Exclusively for Mercado Vicente
”Lingua Franca” is distributed by ARRAY and streaming on Netflix starting August 26th.