Recently named this year’s Canadian entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, Universal Language brings an exceptionally unique story and world to the screen. For Film Studies, English classes, or teachers seeking a truly unique film in tone, aesthetic, story and filmmaking style for their students, this film is a winning choice that has been making waves in international film festivals this year.
Imagine a Canada that feels oddly familiar, but where the national languages are French and Farsi, not English. Tim Horton’s is still beloved, and Louis Riel remains a historical hero, but the signs everywhere are in Persian, and the shopkeepers are all a little eccentric. In this oddly enchanting Winnipeg comedy, two school children find a large sum of money mysteriously frozen in the ice, and ambitiously try to retrieve it. A tour guide leads bewildered tourists around Winnipeg sites, and Matthew (played by writer-director Matthew Rankin, who is also fluent in Farsi) comes home to visit his mother, only to find his family has changed…
Winner of the inaugural Audience Award at this spring’s Directors Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, Rankin’s second feature adopts the look and feel of classic Iranian films from the 1980s, just as his debut, The Twentieth Century, paid homage to silent cinema and old Hollywood musicals. Rankin succeeds in creating a snowy Winnipeg world that feels somehow nostalgic, weaving a story that is delightfully quirky as we follow the intertwined storylines of a cast of memorable characters, each searching for belonging in their own way.
Chantal Akerman Audience Award, Directors’ Fortnight 2024
Q&A with writer/actor Pirouz Nemati
Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Pirouz Nemati, Mani Soleymanlou, Matthew Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi
Canada
2024
In Farsi and French with English subtitles
Credits & Director
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
Production Design
Louisa Schabas
Original Music
Amir Amiri, Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux
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 presented at Sundance, SXSW, Annecy, TIFF, the Berlinale, Cannes Critics Week, Directors Fortnight, 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.
Filmography: The Twentieth Century (2019)