PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Isabel Sandoval and Eamon Farren, director and actor of the film Lingua Franca.
Isabel Sandoval wrote, produced, directed edited and starred in her third film, where the life of a trans Filipino illegal woman in the USA is shaken by the arrival of Alex (Eamon Farren) whose love is a gift and a danger at the same time. Eamon Farren talks about the character of Alex who feels threatened by the nature of his love, not by choice but by social constraint.
Lingua Franca: Olivia, an undocumented Filipino immigrant paranoid about deportation, works as a caregiver to a Russian Jewish grandmother in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. When the American man she’s secretly paying for a green-card marriage backs out, she becomes involved with the old woman’s nephew, Alex, a slaughterhouse worker who is unaware that she’s transgender. When Alex’s machismo is threatened upon discovering her transgender status, he finds himself weaponizing her immigration anxieties to emotionally brutalize Olivia.
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