Universal Language

This zany transformation of Canada’s beigest city into the site of a classic Iranian film won the first ever Audience Award at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

In a reimagined Winnipeg that looks a lot like 1980s Iran – just with a few more turkeys and Kleenex factories – two young kids find a banknote, leading them on an odyssey that takes them out of childhood and into the unforgiving world of adults. A disillusioned teacher shows up late to a class, only to insult his students. And a filmmaker (director Matthew Rankin, playing himself) arrives back at his family home and discovers that another man has taken his place.

For those keeping score, these are indeed homages to Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (MIFF 1996 & 2006) and Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? and Close-Up (MIFF 2003). These Iranian classics serve as inspirations for a unique undertaking by Rankin, whose debut feature, the fantastical biopic The Twentieth Century, won the FIPRESCI prize at Berlin and Best Canadian First Feature at Toronto. Calling Universal Language an “autobiographical hallucination” drawn from a formative obsession with Iranian cinema and a love–hate relationship with his hometown, Rankin spins his own My Winnipeg (MIFF 2008) by way of the meta-realist movies of Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf – though its still frames and sight gags owe just as much to the witty absurdities of Jacques Tati, Roy Andersson and Wes Anderson.

“The best movie at Cannes this year is an oddball Canadian comedy... A magnificent film, one that feels warm and familiar even as we realize just how startlingly original it is.” – Vulture