There’s a notion in the film industry that comedies don’t travel. Jokes have a regional audience, and humor gets lost in translation, the thinking goes. But director Matthew Rankin thinks more of ...

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 ...

The quickest way I can sum up the slow-moving, weirdly touching cinematic oddity that is “Universal Language” is to ask you to imagine what it would look like if Iran were in Canada. This is not as ...

There’s a scene partway through Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language that is a triumph of visual filmmaking. One of the protagonists, Matthew (aka Matheiu), played by the director himself, is arranging ...