Directing
Isabel Sandoval
Born January 1, 1982 · Cebu, Philippines (age 44)
Isabel Sandoval is an independent Filipino filmmaker and actress who is currently based in the United States. She directed the films Señorita (2011), Aparisyon (2012), and Lingua Franca (2019). She also directed the short film Shangri-La (2021) as part of Miu Miu's Women's Tales series of female-directed short films commissioned by the fashion brand.
Known For
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt · 2023All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
★ 5.42023
MovieDrama
Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.
Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors · 2026Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors
2026
MovieHistoryDrama
1617, Las Islas Filipinas. The Spanish friar, Father Enciso, the encomendero of one of the islands, rules with unrelenting toughness and an insatiable libido to tame the savages.
Lingua Franca · 2020Lingua Franca
★ 6.32020
MovieDrama
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.

Jan 27, 2027
The Man I Love · 2027The Man I Love
2027
MovieDramaRomance
In late 1980s New York, a theater artist living with AIDS takes on one possibly last great role.
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed · 2024The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
★ 5.12024
MovieComedy
A mosaic-style comedy following the life of a woman as time passes in her long-term casual BDSM relationship, low-level corporate job, and quarrelsome Jewish family.
Zi · 2026Zi
★ 2.02026
MovieDramaScience Fiction
In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night -- and possibly her life.
Shangri-La · 2021Shangri-La
★ 6.02021
MovieDramaRomance
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.
Moonglow · 2026Moonglow
2026
MovieDramaCrime
In 1970s Manila, a jaded police detective, who, unbeknownst to her colleagues, is the mastermind behind a successful heist, is paired up with her former lover, an obsessively truth-seeking detective, to crack the very crime that she orchestrated.
Filmography
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