Still from Universal Language (2024), dir. Matthew Rankin, with Rojina Esmaeili as “Negin” (image courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories) In Universal Language, director Matthew Rankin transforms the ...

There’s a notion in the film industry that comedies don’t travel. Jokes have a regional audience, and humor gets lost in translation, the thinking goes. But director Matthew Rankin thinks more of ...

The quickest way I can sum up the slow-moving, weirdly touching cinematic oddity that is “Universal Language” is to ask you to imagine what it would look like if Iran were in Canada. This is not as ...

On the heels of its world premiere at Cannes, Matthew Rankin‘s comedy Universal Language has been named as Canada’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards. The ...

I get the feeling Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin has some unresolved issues with his homeland. With his 2019 feature film debut The Twentieth Century, he concocted an alt-history psycho-satire ...

There’s a scene partway through Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language that is a triumph of visual filmmaking. One of the protagonists, Matthew (aka Matheiu), played by the director himself, is arranging ...