For some immigrants, America represented the promised Shangri-La, the reality of which in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would have turned out to be quite different. Isabel Sandoval’s film turns its gaze around that historical moment.

Filipina director Isabel Sandoval (Lingua Franca) travels back in time to California’s Great Depression to offer this intimate portrait of the Asian immigrant experience. An erotically-charged study in fantasy and desire, Shangri-La conjures an oneiric world free from bigotry and prejudice.