It’s not unusual for a city to double for another metropolis in movies. New Yorkers have long been able to spot when Toronto has been substituted for the Big Apple. Matthew Rankin, though, has gone ...

Still from Universal Language (2024), dir. Matthew Rankin, with Rojina Esmaeili as “Negin” (image courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories) In Universal Language, director Matthew Rankin transforms the ...

It all starts with a turkey. Though “starts” might not be the correct word to use for Universal Language, Matthew Rankin’s surreal, loopy film set in some bizarre alternate version of Winnipeg, ...

Namwene Mukabwa is a Collider author based in Nairobi, Kenya. He has a penchant for Westerns, classics, historical, and underrated movies and television series. He became hooked on screens at the age ...

It's also fun to make art with turkeys. The Farsi title, آواز بوقلمون, translates to “The Song of the Turkey,” and the reason why is emblematic of both the film’s warmly absurd sense of humor and the ...

Matthew Rankin’s Farsi- and French-language offbeat homage to Iranian cinema bowed in Cannes and will also screen in Toronto. By Etan Vlessing Canada Bureau Chief The absurdist comedy in the Farsi and ...

There is a good chance that “Universal Language,” the latest feature from writer, director and actor Matthew Rankin, will earn some well-intentioned if superficial comparisons to the work of Wes ...

Legend has it that once upon a time, people all spoke the same language. They decided to build a city and a tower as high as possible, to get closer to God. God, annoyed by this act of defiance by ...

Music is a universal language. Or so musicians like to claim. “With music,” they’ll say, “you can communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries in ways that you can’t with ordinary languages ...