Set "somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg", Canadian director Matthew Rankin’s second feature Universal Language is a homage to family and community. Filmed in Farsi and French, its quaint, absurdist humour has enchanted festival audiences from Cannes to Toronto, and earned it Canada's nomination for Best International Feature at the Oscars.
Bringing people together regardless of distance, language or culture is at the heart of Rankin’s latest project Universal Language (Une Langue Universelle).
Presented in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in May, this odd, bittersweet drama won the People’s Choice Award in its category and the Best Canadian Discovery Award at the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF) on 15 September.
Rankin was working on the script of the film when the Covid pandemic hit. Although he remained in contact with his team, he was mostly alone with his thoughts. He experienced what he calls a "reckoning with solitude", which provided an extra dimension to the story.
"I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, there was great idealistic longing for what the world would be like at the end of this, but I feel we’ve emerged with all these new Berlin Walls that shot up all around," he told RFI in Cannes.
"The world feels very much more binary than it did before."
He says the freedom of "cinematic language" helped him tell this story – borrowing from different cultural codes to suspend time and space and break down barriers.
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Uncanny Canada
Universal Language is set in a flat, snowy landscape dotted with bland beige-coloured buildings that look vaguely Soviet. An endless stream of cars races by on motorway interchanges.
Like in a surreal dream, there are recognisable elements of modern-day Canada, but they seem to disappear into another realm. The logo for the ubiquitous Tim Horton’s coffee chain, for example, is written in Farsi – and inside, they serve only tea to people who sit around knitting socks.
Matthew plays a "version" of himself in the film – a down-and-out public servant in Montreal who goes back to his hometown of Winnipeg in central Canada to check on his ailing mother.
But when he arrives, nothing is quite as it seems. So begins an unusual, introspective journey that overlaps with other characters in the story.
In the same city, two Iranian children are excited because they’ve found money frozen in pack ice. They race around asking neighbours and shop owners for help to dig out the dollar bills.
Meanwhile, there are hilarious scenes with a tour guide, Massoud, who – in a deadpan voice – recounts the various wonders of Winnipeg. These include a briefcase frozen on a bench, left behind by a businessman some years ago and now considered a "Unesco" heritage treasure.
Iranian culture, Afghan Elvis
Rankin says his love of Iranian culture and language played a vital role in making the film, as did friendships made during his travels to Iran as a younger man.
He cites the "meta-realist" Iranian cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf as influences, as well as childhood role model Groucho Marx.
Rankin also says he took inspiration from pop singer Ahmad Zahir – affectionately known as the "Afghan Elvis". He says the musician had an uncanny ability to bridge cultural divides, something the filmmaker wanted to emulate.
Rankin even speaks Farsi in his role, a language he says he’s been learning in "slow motion" for more than 10 years. He also speaks Canadian French, with the distinctive accent of Quebec.
He is careful to point out that film is not intended to make a political statement, but rather a social one.
"We are working from a premise of no borders and universal solidarity," he says, in contrast to the polarising nature of politics.
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Fragments of daily life
After focusing on telling others' stories in his previous films, it was Rankin’s first foray into autobiography.
"All the events in the story come from my life or the life of my family, or dreams that I had or diary entries I wrote down," he says. "It’s all kinds of fragments."
One of the highlights of making the film, Rankin says, was surrounding himself with a big, international team, speaking three languages at a time and sharing ideas on set in real time.
He co-wrote the script with Pirouz Nemati and Ila Firouzabad (who play Massoud and the bus driver respectively) and says the film came to life thanks to their close collaboration.
"The movie is very much a hybrid one. It merges cinematic languages of Winnipeg, Teheran and Montreal and it’s not really about any one of those places. It’s about this strange melding of all three."
For Rankin, the adventure of cinema is all about "opening up new ways of seeing and imagining our complicated, sad, beautiful, luminous world".
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Universal Language is Rankin’s second feature after surrealist dark comedy The Twentieth Century, which won the Berlinale Fipresci Award in 2020 and Best Canadian Debut Award in the Toronto Film Festival's Midnight Madness category in 2019. He has also made over 40 short films.
Universal Language is part of the line-up at the Fifigrot comedy festival in Toulouse (16-22 September) and has been selected to represent Canada in the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards in 2025.
