Universal Language
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Weird Life Events: Universal Language Director Matthew Rankin’s Awards Season Diary
30 August 2024. Montreal. Our movie has been named as Canada’s Official Supplication to the Academy Awards. Lord, please increase my bewilderment! So crazy. I think it’s the first Winnipeg movie to enter this horserace since Richard Condie’s La Salla in 1996. We are told that months of campaigning await! We are not competitive people, but Pirouz Nemati came over and led the whole team in a 12-minute group hug, and we started practicing our back-slapping and glad-handing techniques. David Lynch says, “Look ‘em in the eye and speak from the heart.” FOOTNOTE: My Hater has started an ambitious letter-writing […]
by Matthew Rankin on Mar 18, 2025 -
“We Couldn’t Find that Exact Beige — It Was a Real Struggle”: Production Designer Louisa Schabas on Designing Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language
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Cannes 2024: Furiosa, Bird, Kinds of Kindness, Universal Language
The deficiencies of George Miller’s Fury Road prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga—many of which have, unsurprisingly, been given a pass—echo my broader sentiments towards this year’s Cannes, at least from where we sit just past the halfway point. In Furiosa’s opening minutes, we’re informed via voiceover of the great struggles facing its world: pandemics, famine, climate catastrophe. Offering a supplementary narrative of broader relevance, it’s a table setting of topicality that’s wholly unnecessary to the film’s primary, surface pleasures. Many of this year’s Palme d’Or contenders, too, have felt like showcases for Contemporary Issue X rather than works of […]
by Blake Williams on May 22, 2024 -
“We Wanted to Film These Beige Structures the Way Terrence Malick Films a Sunset”: Director Matthew Rankin on the Canadian/Iranian Interzone of his Cannes-Premiering Universal Language
Scott Macaulay on May 19, 2024
