Universal Language at the Duke Screen Society

Canadian absurdist comedy-drama set in an alternate reality in which Persian, rather than English, is the dominant language of Canada, although it remains in coexistence with French.

(Matthew Rankin, 2024, 89 min, Canada, French and Persian w/ English subtitles, DCP)
With deadpan, absurdist charm, Manitoban filmmaker Matthew Rankin triangulates a group of interconnected storylines set in a wintry, bleakly beautiful Winnipeg. Two kids discover a bank note frozen in a block of ice, which they hope to retrieve to buy their classmates a new pair of glasses. A tour guide brings befuddled visitors on a walking tour of the city’s modest environs. A melancholy man (Rankin, in an autobiographical role) returns home from Montreal to reunite with his family after many years. Imagining a city in which Farsi is the predominant language, Rankin’s visually and narratively inventive film was inspired by Iranian films of the 1970s, frequently humanistic children’s fables, in this case transferred to a world of beige, concrete brutalist buildings and increasingly surreal, Tati-esque humor.

https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/screensociety/screenings/universal-language-matthew-rankin-2024
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31691389

Let's gather 15 min before the show (which starts at 16:00) in front of the theater.

Group discussion will follow in the Rubenstein lobby or, if there is enough interest, at some downtown location nearby.