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Original name: Une Langue Universelle
English name: Universal Language
Year: 2024
Run time: 89 minutes
Language: Farsi, French
Type (Colour/ Black & white): Colour
Country: Canada
Director: Matthew Rankin
Producer: Sylvain Corbeil
Cast: Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Sobhan Javadi, Pirouz Nemati, Matthew Rankin, Mani Soleymanlou
Screenplay: Ila Firouzabadi, Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati
Cinematographer: Isabelle Stachtchenko
Editor: Xi Feng
Sound Designer: Pablo Villegas, Sacha Ratcliffe, Bernard Gariépy Strobl
Music Composer: Amir Amiri, Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux
Costume Designer: Negar Nemati
Production Designer: Louisa Schabas
Production Company: Metafilms
World Sales: Best Friend Forever
Matthew Rankin was born in Winnipeg and studied history at McGill and Univerité Laval. He is the director of some forty documentary, fiction and animation films which have been presented at Sundance, SXSW, TIFF, Annecy, the Berlinale, the Dawson City International Short Film Festival and at Cannes Critics Week. His first feature, The Twentieth Century (2019), was awarded the 2020 FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlinale. He lives in Montréal.
In a mysterious and surreal interzone somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg, the lives of multiple characters interweave with each other in surprising and mysterious ways.
Gradeschoolers Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen in the winter ice and try to claim it. Meanwhile, Massoud leads a group of increasingly-befuddled tourists through the monuments and historic sites of Winnipeg. Matthew quits his meaningless job in a Québecois government office and sets out upon an enigmatic journey to visit his mother.
Space, time and personal identities crossfade, interweave and echo into a surreal comedy of misdirection.
