Universal Language
This absurd dramedy from an alternate-reality Farsi-speaking Canada nods to the masters of Iranian cinema and great surrealists, while cooking up its own thick and flavorful stew.
Please note the film does not have English dialogue or subtitles!
When you say Winnipeg, Canada, most people think of ice hockey or nothing much. But visionary director Matthew Rankin’s Winnipeg is a parallel universe of brutalist architecture and a city soundscape in French and Farsi – where a turkey steals a child’s glasses in a city so melancholic it needs a shop specialised in paper tissues.
The mesmerisingly absurd Universal Language consists of three interwoven stories. Children try to pry out a frozen banknote to help a schoolmate in need. A city tour guide presents a block of flats where ordinary people, but no celebrities, have lived. A civil servant quits his job in a Québécois government office and moves back to Winnipeg to care for his mother suffering from dementia.
Rankin’s film is a nod to both masters of Iranian film as well as the great Surrealists, but his mix is his own, just like his debut feature film The Twentieth Century (R&A 2020). This spectacular film, shot on 16mm film, takes no second place to its role models when it comes to visual storytelling and portrayal of the significance of human life.
But how was it again? Is Winnipeg in Alberta or Manitoba?
Tommi Kumén (translated by Charlotte Elo)
Trailer
