Programmed January 2024

Three by Isabel Sandoval

Featuring an interview with the director, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series “I’m drawn to women with secrets,” says acclaimed Filipina director Isabel Sandoval, who toys with genre conventions in her subversive portraits of women tangled up in complex sociopolitical realities. A true auteur, Sandoval wrote, produced, directed, and starred in her feature debut, Señorita , the gripping, noir-tinged story of a trans woman’s struggles to quit sex work and start a new life. Individual and social crises again collide in Apparition , an intense psychological drama set in a Filipino convent being gradually consumed by the encroaching political unrest of the Marcos era. And with Lingua Franca , Sandoval reached new levels of acclaim, starring alongside Twin Peaks: The Return ’s Eamon Farren in a character study that gives poignant expression to the experiences of an undocumented trans Filipina caregiver living in Brooklyn.