Surreal Canadian comedy shifts between Farsi and French to defy borders
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.
He is careful to point out that film is not intended to make a political statement, but rather a social one.
Read more on RFI English
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