Director Matthew Rankin ’s odyssey through a Winnipeg dotted with homages to Iranian film history — and featuring the coziest ...

Using real stories from the filmmaker’s life, he and his Iranian co-writers Ila Firouzabad and Pirouz Nemati create a world ...

His “Universal Language” takes place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but the culture is entirely Iranian. Farsi is the spoken tongue.

Tehran comes to Winnipeg in 'Universal Language,' Matthew Rankin's singular gem about cross-cultural exchange.

It’s not unusual for a city to double for another metropolis in movies. New Yorkers have long been able to spot when Toronto ...

There’s not one word in English, not even “Do you speak English?” Filmmaker Matthew Rankin is a Canadian history scholar who switched tracks from academia to art. Maybe there’s something ...

A lightly satirical and surrealist comedy imagines the snowy Canadian city in the style of the Iranian New Wave.

Matthew Rankin, though, has gone more than a step, or maybe 85 steps, further. His “Universal Language” takes place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but the culture is entirely Iranian. Farsi is the ...

Written and directed by director Matthew Rankin, the comedy presents a Persian-language-inflected Canada, getting at timely questions of homeland and belonging.

Abbas Kiarostami wasn’t the first Iranian director to explore these binaries, often by using moviemaking itself as a ...

Both a valentine to Iranian cinema and an absurdist look at Winnipeg, Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin's comedy is ...