Universal Language
This film longs to hold you.
Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.
Summary
Set in a surreal, snowbound world suspended somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg, Universal Language follows several seemingly separate stories that gradually begin to echo one another. Schoolchildren Negin and Nazgol discover money frozen beneath the ice of a Winnipeg sidewalk. Determined to retrieve it, they launch an increasingly complicated effort involving improvised tools, local authority, and the peculiar logic of the adults around them. Elsewhere, Massoud leads a group of tourists on a walking tour of Winnipeg’s historic landmarks. What begins as a conventional excursion soon takes on an uncanny, dreamlike quality as the guide and his visitors become entangled in the city’s strange histories and stranger present. Meanwhile, Matthew leaves his position with the Québec government and sets out on an uncertain journey to see his estranged mother, encountering a series of characters and situations that make his trip feel less like a homecoming than a passage into another reality. Matthew Rankin’s film blends deadpan comedy, Iranian cinema influences, and an intentionally artificial vision of Canada in which Persian and French coexist naturally and cultural boundaries seem to shift from scene to scene. Its characters are often isolated by language, geography, bureaucracy, or family distance, yet they continue searching for ways to communicate and care for one another. Beneath the absurdist humor, Universal Language is a warm, melancholic meditation on belonging, migration, memory, and the universal need to find connection in an unfamiliar world.
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