Universal Language: “Creating proximity where there seems to be distance” | Exclusive Interview

Audience Award winner at the latest Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, and Canada’s choice for the 97th Academy Awards, Universal Language, the second feature film by Winnipeg-born filmmaker Matthew Rankin, is a rare cinematic gem, stunning in its beauty and enchanting in its soul. Set against the backdrop of a Winnipeg blanketed by winter, where Farsi has become the universal language, Rankin creates a playground for characters whose quests intertwine and collide, forced to break through the coldness of winter and the bleakness of a drab city in order to interact and connect. What unfolds is a quirky, absurd, and exhilarating human tapestry.

As the film prepares to hit theaters in Montreal on Friday, January 31, we had the pleasure of speaking with the creators of this eccentric and haunting work: the three screenwriters Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati, and Ila Firouzabadi, along with the two young actresses, Saba Vahedyousefi and Rojina Esmaeili.

Universal Language is above all a hybrid piece, a hallucinatory dream, a unique visual fairytale at the crossroads of multiple inspirations, from Quebecois, Canadian, and Iranian cinema, all imbued with a distinct personality. It’s probably the film’s unique style that serves as the key to entering this world.

“People ask me what the film is about, and I have trouble answering it because […] we do tell the story, there are characters, but I don’t think that is necessarily the central vector of the movie,” notes Matthew Rankin.

Summing up the film by its plot would indeed be reductive and miss the essence of this work: the creation of a unique and offbeat universe set in a fantastical Winnipeg, within which characters move like puppets infused with caustic humor. The film explores a wide range of human experiences and emotions, including loneliness, social discomfort, nostalgia, the longing for help, and the universal need for human warmth.

“I think what the movie really is, is its world, its atmospheres, its feelings, its images. All of those are brought into a kind of poetic synthesis. But the world-building is kind of key to that,” Rankin said.

Creating such a world is what excites Matthew Rankin most: “I don’t consider myself a dramatist. I barely consider myself a storyteller, really. I think of myself as a filmmaker, and that means that it’s a linguistic proposition—using image and sound in time to create feelings. And that’s what I really love. I love things that are truly cinematic, that no other form could express. I love the cinematic language.”

It is, therefore, through images that Matthew Rankin conceived the film, which heavily relies on a collection of visually choreographed tableaux that are both suggestive and playful.

“For example, I did a very elaborate storyboard, and for me, that is more of a script. I don’t find that the script form is one that is particularly cinematic. It’s a blueprint for a film that you’re going to make. But on paper, in written word form, it could still be anything. When I start translating it into images, you have a better sense of what the film actually is—its personality, its tone, its modulations. I really love to draw, so I drew the whole thing.”

Building a world, laying its unique foundations, creating a setting, and shaping how Winnipeg is portrayed and where its characters are immersed is a process that requires deep thought, ideas, and coherence at every turn. It’s a challenge that allows the filmmaker to express his genius.

“I like things to be difficult. When I feel like I’m in a little bit of danger and I’m not sure how to make the images that I need to make, I think that’s the really exciting spot to be in as a filmmaker. I would like to feel each time I make a film that I’m willfully relaunching the Hindenburg, knowing that it might explode. And that keeps me very creative. It forces me to think outside my own head and not take any shortcuts. And I think that, you know, a lot of films—and it’s understandable because film is expensive and difficult—but we repeat a lot of the same images again and again. And our ambition with this movie was really to make new images.”

To bring this distinct cinematic world to life, the director surrounded himself with two trusted co-screenwriters, with whom he developed a taste for collaboration and rising to this challenge: Iranian cinema’s Swiss knife Pirouz Nemati and Iranian visual artist Ila Firouzabadi. The latter recalls the collaborative nature of their work: “That was a dream that we all hallucinated together.”

Nemati, also one of the film’s main actors, thoroughly enjoyed imagining this quirky world at the intersection of various styles: “It was such a fun experience, kind of creating our own world,” he still savors. “It’s kind of like, how children would make up their own world. We had total freedom. We worked with our friends. And we tried to imagine this world, and so many creative ideas and so many things came out of it. I think that the most exciting part was the space to imagine, infinitely, as we could, and then a lot of it was part of the film.”

A world Nemati imagined as a co-screenwriter and in which he also thrived as an actor: “It’s a world I really enjoyed being in. You know, when the film shooting finished, it was kind of sad for all of us to be leaving of a world we created. I mean, it’s amazing now to be able to relive it every time we watch the film.”

This singular universe indeed emerged from a collective and fruitful effort, as Rankin highlights: “The movie’s script really emerged out of a very long conversation between the three of us. And a lot of that involved coming up with ideas that we found beautiful, funny, and strange.”

A collaboration that proved crucial for the director, who places significant value on this multi-headed experience, rejecting the myth of the director wearing a “Napoleonic hat” and imagining the work alone down to its smallest detail.

“Making a film in Farsi in Winnipeg is not the easiest path. It’s a dark siding path, and it’s one that we found to be infinitely rewarding, but it involves learning how to see and really creating a brain. We think of the movie that we created together as a brain—this sort of chemical Iran or Winnipeg brain. And that brain is more intelligent than each one of us individually. The brain thinks, and the brain is making the film, and we are all part of that brain. The director’s maybe the point of synthesis, but it’s the brain that is making the film, and we’re serving that brain.”

This value of collaboration evolved into creative freedom on set. Behind the apparent rigidity of the brutalist set and the precisely choreographed direction that carefully and joyfully orchestrates a quirky, offbeat, and luminous human comedy in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio masterfully handled by Isabelle Stachtchenko, the film was also shaped by improvisation, eagerly welcoming unexpected contributions. Rankin recalls: “As we were filming, other ideas attached themselves to the idea. For example, we filmed in the shopping mall in Winnipeg, Portage Place, and Pirouz (Nemati) had some responses. He had never been there before and had some personal reactions to the space. He came up with some little ideas for dialogue, which are very funny, and they ended up in the movie. That was really just his personal reaction to the strange setting we were in.”

The same happened with one of the most unusual scenes, fitting within the narrative arc of a turkey. “Similarly, the man who sings for the turkeys at the end of the film—that wasn’t in the script at all. He came on set on the day we were shooting and said, ‘I’d like to sing for the turkeys.’ And we were like, ‘Yes.’ That wasn’t a thing we had written down or storyboarded, but now it’s one of those scenes that we can’t imagine the movie without.”

More broadly, the meeting with the entire cast proved also crucial in refining the script and bringing the material written by the three screenwriters to life.

“Most of the people in the film are non-actors,” Matthew Rankin clarifies. “They’re mainly our friends, people we know quite well, and we sort of knew their personalities. They’re not actors by profession, but they have a capacity to perform. There’s something about them that’s magical or enchanting—they’re funny, they can tell a story. So we started to rewrite the script to better reflect the person who was going to play the part and create space for them to express themselves personally through the role. Casting was really part of writing.”

Ila Firouzabadi, involved in the casting process, remembers how the decisive encounter with the two main actresses, Saba Vahedyousefi and Rojina Esmaeili, changed the project.

“The original script was about a brother and sister who had to take the trip together. But when we cast Rosina and Saba, we couldn’t really choose between them. So we changed the cast and decided to have two sisters instead of one sister and brother.”

Two young non-professional actresses with whom the chemistry was immediate, within a supportive team. They recall their immersion in the strange world imagined by the three co-screenwriters: “What I love about the movie is that it has a dark fantasy vibe,” explains Rojina Esmaeili, who plays Negin. “I always watch dark fantasy movies. So it was actually kind of easy for me to get used to this fantasy world. And it was really nice.”

Rojina Esmaeili also found some common ground between herself and her character, Negin: “I thought “What if the aliens are just like us, in a fantasy world like this?” Negin is not naïve, she doesn’t trust people easily, and even in a good situation, she points out the bad thing. Which is also a bad trait of mine. So I found a bit of myself in Negin as well.”

Saba Vahedyousefi, who plays Nazgol, also found an easy immersion: “I think since there’s no concept of time necessarily, like in the movie, whether it’s fashion choices or any type of clock — the clock we see in the movie doesn’t even have the time on it. So I think it makes us concentrate more on the main subject, which, personally, I think is friendship.”

Both actresses clearly enjoyed playing their roles, while also being free and encouraged to bring their own touch to the story. “The world created by Matthew (Rankin) is just like in lucid dreams, sometimes it makes sense, but other times it doesn’t. It’s basically like you’re on a canvas, drawing, adding your own creativity to the painting,” explains Rojina Esmaeili.

Moreover, the actors in Universal Language had the task of portraying absurd and offbeat characters, which was a true joy for Pirouz Nemati, who plays Massoud, a tour guide who is part-depressed, part-enthusiastic, with particularly hilarious dialogue. One of the film’s sharpest and most caustic threads is the guided tour of Winnipeg led by Nemati’s character, which he describes with relish: “My tour is about giving importance to the absurd and the mundane. To the forgotten people, the kind gestures, and the things that are beautiful about the world, even if they’re as ordinary as they seem.”

In particular, the tour guide celebrated the anonymous people who used to live in a plain building: “These are the people we often forget about, like office workers or call center operators. They’re a big part of our society. They’re the everyday people, and they’re good people, but they often don’t get recognized. So I think a big part of the film is about reversing perspectives and seeing things differently. It’s curious.”

The film is also infused with a fine, clinical sense of humor, a delicate balancing act for the actor, especially when performing in such extreme cold. “It was very challenging to be in the extreme cold, especially in Winnipeg. Most of my scenes were shot there, in extreme weather conditions. We were there for hours, trying to pull off one of the craziest maneuvers ever attempted in Winnipeg,” recalls Nemati. As Matthew Rankin observes: “The city is very cold, and the idea is to find little spaces of warmth in it.”

A beautiful contrast throughout the film is the rigidity of the architecture, often framed in still shots or elegant, fluid movements, juxtaposed with the characters’ journey, which unfolds within this framework.

Ila Firouzabadi explains: “The architecture was rigid but very beautiful. It was beige, beige buildings, and you know, Winnipeg is like that, like Tehran in some ways — very gray. We thought about human nature. Human nature is very fluid, and people can flow like a river through all this rigidity, these walls, these borders. We made the film about humanity, about how people, like children, can move fluidly between these walls, helping each other. And as I said, the seed of this movie came from friendship.”

Pirouz Nemati agrees with this interpretation of the message of the film: “There’s something about kind gestures, the banalities of life, community, and friendship in this increasingly diverse world we live in. There’s a message there, an invitation. It’s about human connection, not politics or governments. Our message is for the people, heart to heart.”

To emphasize the idea of human connection that transcends physical — and brutalist — or mental barriers, the sound work in Universal Language stands out as particularly remarkable, and one of the film’s key strengths. The sound design alone reveals the project’s creativity and embodies one of the film’s strongest messages. This meticulous craftsmanship is the result of a long-standing collaboration: “I’ve been working for many years with a sound artist named Sacha Ratcliffe. She’s done the sound design for all of my recent films,” explains Rankin. “She has her own practice as a sound artist, works in installation, and does sound design. She’s become a very important collaborator for me.”

In Universal Language, their work is particularly precise and unusual: “The sound in the movie is very daring — it really defies how we normally think of sound logic in film,” notes Rankin.

This is evident from the opening scene, set near an elementary school and filmed from outside the courtyard, which sets the stage for a film that plays with our perceptions: “The opening scene is, in many ways, a statement of the theme through sound. We begin with a concrete wall, with a couple of tiny windows in it. We watch a character walk in. As they do, the sound moves through the wall, inside. Another character appears, and we move back outside. In that moment, we’re both inside and outside, hearing what’s going on in both places. That defies logic. We questioned it, and the sound mixer, Bernard Gariépy-Strobl, challenged us on it. He thought it might be too illogical for the viewer, but after trying it in a few ways, we concluded it worked. 

This formal decision reflects the entire thematic idea of the film. We made the film from a position of no borders, trying to create proximity between spaces that are typically separate. Having the sound move through a concrete wall, bringing you inside when you’re outside — and vice versa — that’s the essence of the movie, both abstractly and formally.”

In this approach, we also find inspiration drawn from the great Iranian poets of cinema: Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Jafar Panahi—figures Matthew Rankin openly admires. Here, the sound design prompts the viewer to reflect on their perception.

“The idea of subverting the logic of the simulacrum, and sort of even running the risk of reminding the viewer that what they’re watching is a movie, that it’s fake, going beyond what’s typical, not trying to hide itself… Normally, we want the experience to be so seamless that we forget we’re watching a film. But I love to integrate the artifices of cinema, exploring their expressive and thematic power. So in the film, for example, we have a car driving at a great distance, yet you hear the voices inside the car as if you’re right there with them. That’s the essence of the whole thing: creating proximity where there seems to be distance, transcending that distance altogether.”

Mirroring the film’s hybridity, the music composition was the result of an unprecedented collaboration, and brought about a vibrant, profound, and distinct personality to the film, enveloping it in an exotic, warm, and luminous atmosphere.

“We worked with two musicians who didn’t know each other at all,” describes Rankin, who arranged the meeting between Amir Amiri, a master of classical Persian music, and Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux, an experimental electronic musician from Quebec. “They didn’t know each other personally or musically, coming from completely different traditions. But I had this feeling that if we brought them together, they would make it work. My vision for the music was an electro-ambient reworking of classical Persian modes, and I was sure they’d figure it out.”

“There’s one scene in the film with a figure skater that serves as a musical interlude. Amir and Christophe actually perform the music in the film. This music had to be composed before we shot, not only because they were performing it onscreen, but because the figure skater needed to choreograph her moves to it. So, we had to compose it first, then film. It was the first piece we worked on, and I thought, ‘Let’s try it out. If it’s a disaster, we’ll figure something else out.’ My fantasy, though, was that it would work, and they’d end up doing the entire score.”

And it worked. As Rankin dreamed, a new and unexpected musical alchemy came to life: “They went into a room and a day later came out best friends. They had such a great time together. They said, ‘Whatever happens with this movie, we want to keep making music together—whether for this film or others.’”

Matthew Rankin was ecstatic: “It was perfect. It was the one moment in my entire filmmaking career when I had no notes. I just thought, ‘This is fantastic, I love it.’ What you hear in the movie is exactly what they delivered after just one day of working together. And it felt completely natural.”

The soundtrack, blending classical, experimental, and electro-ambient styles, forms a striking, unique mix—a fusion of magic, humanity, warmth, soulful depth, and enchantment. The final piece of music, on which the duo focused particularly, deeply impressed Rankin. “It’s a delicate piece, stripped down to its most basic elements, but it knocks my socks off. It’s incredible.”

Rankin can take pride in the fact that the two musicians have decided to continue their collaboration beyond the film. “They’re producing an album of the soundtrack, which includes new pieces not in the film. This is one of my favorite stories, because it really embodies the spirit of making the whole film.”

Much like the blossoming collaboration between these two artists, that’s what the film offers: the desire to continue. To keep living, to keep wandering in the parallel and captivating space it has created. “Wait, I want to do more scenes. I want to continue. Why is it over?” This is what Rojina Esmaeili thought at the end of filming. As spectators, we might say the same of this timeless and mesmerizing work, one that leaves us with an enduring sense of wonder, lingering gracefully in our minds long after the credits roll.

We would like to thank Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati, Ila Firouzabadi, Saba Vahedyousefi, and Rojina Esmaeili for their time and generosity, as well as Mélanie Mingotaud and Juliette Tison for making these interviews possible.