Apr 16: Universal Language

Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2025
7 pm @ Galaxy Cinemas, Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Director: Matthew Rankin
Canada 2024
French/Persian; 89 min.

Filmmaker Matthew Rankin introduces us to a charmingly impossible Canada where Persian and French are the two official languages, and loneliness is the common currency. Set in a reimagined Winnipeg, the film follows a group of
children on eccentric quests to flummox the adults around them, and the government worker who returns home only to find his family is not what he remembered. Universal Language is a loving exploration of a diasporicnation, filtered through a deadpan comic sensibility.

Canadian Oscar Submission for Best International Feature Film

It is as far from the commercial mainstream as narrative filmmaking gets, but for connoisseurs of the poetic bizarre, it has its very real enchantments.Ty Burr, Washington Post

There is no single category that you can slot Rankin’s mix of a wink, a nudge and an embrace into, so we guess “lo-fi masterpiece” will have to do until a better option comes along. David Fear, Rolling Stone