Skip to main content
Universal Language film image; man with colourful circles drawn over his face

Gord Grdina's Qalandar

+ Universal Language Film Screening

VIFF Live

This event has passed

Gordon Grdina’s Qalandar are a contemporary Persian ensemble that strike a balance between tradition and innovation.

The ensemble (featuring Ali Razmi on vcocals, Hamin Honari on tombak and daf, Kenton Loewen on drums, Gordon Grdina on oud, and Hidayat Honari on tar) combines Arabic, Persian music and free improvisation with traditional and contemporary Persian pieces. The compositional duties are shared among the ensemble members creating pieces that consider each of the musician’s varied histories while honouring a unified group aesthetic. The ensemble developed out of a weekly traditional Persian gig shared among friends. The group helped to open the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and has played many times for CBC, Coastal Jazz and Blues Society and VICO.

This concert will pay tribute to founding member, Kamanche player, father, friend, and artist Reza Honari. After the live set, we invite you to enjoy the acclaimed comedy Universal Language.

Gordon Grdina — Oud
Ali Razmi Setar — Vocals
Hidayat Honari — Tar
Hamin Honari — Tombak and Daf
Kenton Loewen — Drums

About Universal Language: One of oddest, funniest, freshest movies of the year, Universal Language reimagines Winnipeg as a Farsi-speaking outpost of Iran. Matthew Rankin pays tribute to the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi though his deadpan framing of a beige and concrete, snowswept urban landscape, where two young girls attempt to liberate a frozen hundred dollar bill from the ice, while sightseekers drift between pet cemeteries and empty shopping malls, and a man named Matthew Rankin (played by Matthew Rankin) returns home to visit his ailing mother.

The live music will be from 8:00 pm, with the film screening beginning at approximately 9:20 pm.

Matthew Rankin’s film is a wildly creative exercise in prairie surrealism that offers a hopeful alternative vision to the anxious political moment.

Liam Lacey, Original Cin

While the film is laugh-out-loud funny — literally — it is also, by the end, as the wandering characters are finally brought together, ineffably sad and delicate.

Alison Gillmor, Winnipeg Free Press

Universal Language is a magnificent film, one that feels warm and familiar even as we realize just how startlingly original it is.

Bilge Eberi, New York Magazine

 

Co-Presented with

     

Guest

Gordon Grdina’s Qalandar

Director

Matthew Rankin

Cast

Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Pirouz Nemati, Mani Soleymanlou, Matthew Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi

Credits
Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2024

Film Language

In Farsi and French with English subtitles

19+
200 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Executive Producer

Pirouz Nemati, Ila Firouzabadi, Matthew Rankin, Dan Berger, Aaron Katz

Producer

Sylvain Corbeil

Screenwriter

Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati, Ila Firouzabadi

Cinematography

Isabelle Stachtchenko

Editor

Xi Feng

Original Music

Amir Amiri, Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux

Production Design

Louisa Schabas

Also Playing

Happy Feet

Dir. George Miller
168 min

A tap-dancing penguin named Mumble can't sing like the others, but his unique skill may save his colony. Happy Feet is a music-filled adventure that celebrates courage, friendship, staying true to yourself, and is a perfect icy break this summer!

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Ghosts of the Sea

97 min

Imagine an especially poetic true crime podcast about a sailor who built his own sailboat and lived on the high seas, but lost not one, but two wives along the way... Now imagine it told from the vantage point of his daughter: Ghosts of the Sea.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Apocalypse in the Tropics

Dir. Petra Costa
110 min

An Academy Award nominee for Edge of Democracy, Petra Costa returns with a fascinating take on how the Evangelical movement has taken Brazil by storm and worked with the right to undermine the constitutional separation of Church and State.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Oldboy

Dir. Park Chan-wook
120 min

The second movie in Park's Vengeance Trilogy. Choi Min-sik stars as Dae Su, inexplicably held captive by he-knows-not-who for 15 years, and then, just as inexplicably, released. Not surprisingly, after all this time, he has only one thing on his mind...

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema