A Filmmaker’s Surreal Journey Into His Own Private Winnipeg
Director Matthew Rankin’s Oscar-contending film Universal Language is a culture-bending comic homage to his Canadian hometown and its unassuming civic identity.
A still from director Matthew Rankin’s new film, Universal Language.
Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories
The average television viewer has seen a lot of Winnipeg without even realizing it. The mid-sized capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba often stands in for the quaint American towns depicted in Hallmark Media’s family-friendly movies. But to filmmaker Matthew Rankin, his hometown — with its unloved architecture and under-appreciated local history — deserves the opportunity to play itself, too.
Rankin’s latest film, Universal Language, is being released in theaters across the US this week and is Canada’s international feature film submission for this year’s Academy Awards. The 43-year-old director uses his Winnipeg filming locations to build a surrealist vision of the city based on a mix of his own life, family stories, and dreams he had of his late parents. The absurdist comedy, which landed on Vulture’s roundup of the best movies of 2024, follows several characters, among them a tour guide named Massoud (Pirouz Nemati) whose itineraries feature stops at a dead mall and a surface parking lot known for its historic parallel parking incident. Rankin also includes an exceptionally long moment of silence at the gravesite of Louis Riel, the Indigenous revolutionary figure who founded Manitoba. This is the Winnipeg that Hanukkah on the Rocks and Never Been Chris’d don’t want you to see.