Universal Language
Friday April 4 at 7:30pm (Canada, 89 minutes, French & Farsi)
Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a large sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-absurd walking tour of Winnipeg monuments and historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother. Time, geography and identities crossfade, interweave and collide into a surreal comedy of misdirection.
Structured like a Venn diagram – at the point of confluence between Jacques Tati and Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy – Universal Language is at once a diary film, an absurdist city symphony and a welling-up of confinement-eraemotion exploring the mysterious interzone where one person ends and the rest of the world begins. An elusive, half remembered dream of home, solitude, our responsibilities to others and the wild turkeys that haunt us.
Matthew Rankin
Matthew Rankin was born in Winnipeg and studied history at McGill and Université Laval. He is the director of some 40 short films and two features which have been variously presented at Sundance, SXSW, Annecy, TIFF, the Berlinale, Cannes Critics Week and Directors Fortinight and on the Criterion Channel. His first feature, The Twentieth Century, was awarded the FIPRESCI prize of the international film critics at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival and the 2019 Best First Canadian Feature Award at TIFF. Universal Language, winner of the inaugural People's Choice Award presented by the Chantal Akerman Foundation at the 2024 Cannes Directors Fortnight, is Matthew's second feature.
He lives in Montréal.
CREDITS
Director Matthew Rankin
Screenwriters Matthew Rankin S Pirouz Nemati S Ila Firouzabadi
Producers Sylvain Corbeil
Line Producer Catherine Boily, Rosalie Chicoine Perreault
Cinematographer Isabelle Stachtchenko
Editors Xi Feng
Production Designer Louisa Schabas
Costume Designer Negar Nemati
Hair & Make-Up Artist Nermin Grbic & Marie Salvado
Assistant Director Florelle Del Bugo
Music Score Amir Amiria, Christopher Lamarche- Ledoux
Sound Designer Sacha Ratcliffe
Sound Mix Bernard Gariépy-Strobl
Casting Marlou Richer, Ila Firouzabadi
Principle Cast Rohina Esmaeili
Saba Vahedyousefi
Pirouz Nemati
Mani Soleymanlou
Matthew Rankin
Ila Fiouzabadi