Matthew Rankin says he's proud to attend this year's Cannes Film Festival with fellow Winnipeg-born director Guy Maddin ā especially since his hometownās indie film scene often gets overlooked.
āItās wonderful to be there with Guy. In a lot of ways, heās a huge mentor to me and to all emerging Winnipeg filmmakers,ā he says on a video call from Montreal.
āWe'll see if Winnipeg takes any notice of us being there. That would be fun. I don't know what will happen.ā
Rankinās sophomore feature āUniversal Languageā will make its world premiere at Cannesā parallel section Directorsā Fortnight, while veteran filmmaker Maddinās dark comedy āRumours,ā co-directed with Winnipeggers Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, will debut out of competition.
They are among several Canadians with films screening at the 77th edition of the festival ā kicking off Tuesday in southern France ā including Torontoās David Cronenberg, whose horror feature "The Shrouds" will compete for the Palme dāOr.
Though Winnipeg will have a significant presence at Cannes, Rankin says the city has become āvery corporateā over the years and doesnāt celebrate its homegrown independent talent as it should.
āDespite all the great artists who live there, there's no interest in their work on the part of institutions or the government or even culture writ large,ā says the director who made his Cannes debut in 2017 with short film āThe Tesla World Light,ā which screened at Criticsā Week, another parallel section of the festival.
āI feel like the Hallmark movement has really taken over that town. It's become all about Christmas movies and the independents make their work in defiance. The system is structured against them. But this has always been a tension in Winnipeg.ā
He says that friction has led Winnipegās indie filmmakers to have a āpunk rock, anti-establishment, anti-mainstreamā impulse.
Rankinās hometown plays a big role in āUniversal Language,ā and so does he. The director stars as himself in the surrealist comedy, in which he leaves a mind-numbing job with the Quebec government and takes a winding trip to Winnipeg to visit his mother.Ā
His storyline intertwines with two others: Rojina Esmaeili and Saba Vahedyousefi star as two girls attempting to retrieve an Iranian banknote frozen beneath a sheath of ice, while Pirouz Nemati plays a tour guide leading a bewildered group through Winnipegās increasingly bizarre monuments and historical sites.
Space, time and people all blend abstractly throughout the film; characters trade places, the setting cross-fades between Winnipeg, Quebec and Tehran and the dialogue alternates between French and Farsi.
āItās about exploring the fluidity of our experience of life, fluidity of identity, how we overlap,ā says Rankin.
āIn life, weāre in dialogue with lots of different data. We're not just living in one structured binary. We're part of a much larger human family, a much more complex story."
Co-writer Ila Firouzabadi, who grew up in Tehran and currently lives in Montreal, says "itās about our common brain ā Quebecois, Winnipeg and Iranian all together."
The filmās fever dream aura is on-brand for Rankin, whose debut feature, 2019ās āThe Twentieth Century,ā is an absurdist biopic about former Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
Rankin says "Universal Language" fits into the style of Winnipegās indie film scene, which has ātaken the vocabulary of experimental film and has reprocessed it to tell these very personal, very bizarre, very countercultural, personal stories.ā
He says the oddball sensibility of many Winnipeg movies is āthe most sincere and authentic expressionā of the city that can exist.
āThis is the Winnipeg that I love the most. I feel like itās something you can trace throughout Winnipeg history from Louis Riel to the 1919 general strike, right up to Guy Maddin and beyond,ā he says.
āIt's this absolute rejection of the North American mainstream that resists the pull of Anglo America.ā
Rankin says he and Firouzabadi will share an Airbnb at Cannes with 12 people from the filmās crew, including first-time actors Esmaeili and Vahedyousefi.
āWeāll have to shake some hands. Thereāll probably be a few backs weāll have to slap. I guess weāll see some films and stuff,ā he quips.
Some might say Rankin being highlighted at the festival with Maddin suggests a passing of the torch for Winnipegās film scene, but he prefers to take a bigger-picture perspective.
āThat torch is passed on to many people. Thereās an incredible community of filmmakers making work in Winnipeg about Winnipeg and about that experience who will carry that tradition on.ā
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2024.
Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press
