Matthew Rankin’s Farsi- and French-language offbeat homage to Iranian cinema bowed in Cannes and will also screen in Toronto. By Etan Vlessing Canada Bureau Chief The absurdist comedy in the Farsi and ...

Canadian director Matthew Rankin’s Persian and French-language drama Universal Language has won the inaugural Audience Award of Directors’ Fortnight. This is the first official prize launched by ...

It all starts with a turkey. Though “starts” might not be the correct word to use for Universal Language, Matthew Rankin’s surreal, loopy film set in some bizarre alternate version of Winnipeg, ...

It’s not unusual for a city to double for another metropolis in movies. New Yorkers have long been able to spot when Toronto has been substituted for the Big Apple. Matthew Rankin, though, has gone ...

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 ...

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 ...

After an alarming report quoting Universal Pictures International France boss Xavier Albert saying that the studio is “officially stopping” to handle local movies, a source close to the studio told ...