Isabel Sandoval

Moonglow

In 1970s Manila, a jaded police detective, who, unbeknownst to her colleagues, is the mastermind behind a successful heist, is paired up with an obsessively truth-seeking detective partner to crack the very crime that she orchestrated.

The Listening Tapes

In three reenactments of a controversial 1983 television interview, actors Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga, and Isabel Sandoval play late French actress Maria Schneider. “The Listening Takes” is a prescient confrontation with the patriarchal structure of the film industry. [Overview Courtesy of Participant Inc.]

Maria Schneider, 1983

In 1983, French actress Maria Schneider gives an interview for the TV show Cinéma Cinémas. The conversation takes an unexpected turn when she challenges film industry practices and is asked to talk about the controversial film Last Tango in Paris (1972).

The Actress

In search of her unique voice, an aspiring actress infiltrates cinema history. As she traverses time, space, and gender, she shape-shifts through Hollywood’s most iconic roles, reimagining cinematic archetypes for today.

Shangri-La

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. This is the 21st commission from Miu Miu Women's Tales​ series.

A 1984 Period Piece in Present Day

A couple stop at a motel in an unfamiliar territory. An unreliable memory reveals the irrelevance of identity.

Lingua Franca

Olivia, an undocumented Filipina immigrant paranoid about deportation, works as a caregiver to a Russian-Jewish grandmother in New York. When the man she’s secretly paying for a green card marriage backs out, she becomes involved with a slaughterhouse worker who is unaware that she’s a trans woman.

Señorita

Donna, a transgender sex worker in Manila, moves back to her small hometown in search of a new life. Once there, she reunites with her child, who knows her as his aunt, and becomes caught up in the intrigues surrounding a critical local election, working to unseat the corrupt mayor.

Señorita

Laura, a transgender 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?

Tropical Gothic

Philippines, 1570, the early years of the Spanish colonial regime. Marta, a Native Priestess, convinces her Spanish master that she is possessed by the spirit of his dead bride, in order to manipulate him into returning the farmland that the Spaniards seized from the native community.