UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

Canada | 2024 | DCP | 89 min. | Farsi & French with English subtitles
Director: Matthew Rankin
Cast: Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Pirouz Nemati
One of the year’s most original films is this imaginative, droll, and surprisingly moving second feature by Matthew Rankin (The Twentieth Century, WFF 2020). In an alternate universe Winnipeg that bears more than a passing resemblance to Tehran, a bizarre walking tour is underway; meanwhile, a pair of school kids discover money frozen under ice, and a low-level Montreal bureaucrat (played by Rankin himself) returns home after many years away. Having proved himself a technical virtuoso with a dazzling series of short films, Rankin here turns to the Iranian New Wave for inspiration, marrying that movement’s formal playfulness and humanism with his characteristically offbeat Winnipegian style to wondrous ends. (MK)