Isabel Sandoval’s “Tropical Gothic” To Be Produced by Big Beach

We’re one step closer to seeing Isabel Sandoval’s fourth feature. Deadline reports that Big Beach will produce “Tropical Gothic,” an allegory about Western colonialism that marks the multi-hyphenate’s follow-up to 2019’s “Lingua Franca,” a drama about an undocumented caregiver that made history as the first film directed by and starring a trans woman of color to screen in competition at Venice Film Festival.

“Tropical Gothic” is set in the 16th century in the Philippines and follows a Native Priestess who “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,” the source teases.

Sandoval will direct and star in the pic, which she also wrote. Production will kick off later this year.

“I’ve always been drawn to marginalized women in fraught socio-political milieus,” Sandoval told us in a 2019 interview. She made her feature debut with 2011’s “Señorita” and followed it up with 2012’s “Apparition.”