Director: Matthew Rankin
A frozen banknote trapped in sidewalk ice, a tour guide leading strangers through Winnipeg's least remarkable landmarks, and a government clerk chasing a memory of his mother — Universal Language braids three lives across a wintry, imagined city where Persian and Canadian worlds quietly overlap.
What is Universal Language about?
Two schoolgirls, Negin and Nazgol, spot cash locked beneath a sheet of ice and spend the film scheming to free it with whatever tools they can borrow. Elsewhere, a weary tour operator named Massoud steers a handful of baffled visitors past benches, parking lots, and other unglamorous corners of the city, insisting each one matters. A third thread follows a man named Matthew, who quits his desk job in Québec and sets out, almost by accident, toward the mother he has not seen in years. Writer-director Matthew Rankin sets all three stories in a version of Winnipeg where Farsi and French signage share the same streets, and turkeys wander freely past bus stops. The tone stays deadpan throughout, finding comedy in bureaucratic dead ends and tenderness in small, patient gestures rather than big speeches.
Cast & crew
Rojina Esmaeili and Saba Vahedyousefi anchor the film's most buoyant stretch as the ice-money schemers, while Pirouz Nemati brings dry comic timing to the tour-guide segments. Director Matthew Rankin also appears on screen as the government clerk searching for his mother, and Mani Soleymanlou rounds out the ensemble in a supporting role that ties the three storylines together by the closing scenes.
Context & significance
Rankin, working with co-writers and cast drawn largely from Winnipeg's Iranian-Canadian community, built the film's visual language around Iranian arthouse cinema of the 1990s, right down to its title cards and framing choices, while keeping the setting unmistakably Canadian. That fusion earned Universal Language a place in Cannes' Directors' Fortnight and made it Canada's official submission for the international feature category at the following year's Academy Awards, a rare crossover for a film shot largely in Farsi and French on a modest budget.
Where & how to watch
Universal Language streams on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles available, alongside the original mixed-language audio. A free account login is all that's needed to start watching; the interface itself is built around a Farsi-first viewing experience for Persian-speaking audiences wherever they are.