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How Universal Language Found Poetry in Meaningless Spaces
Matthew Rankin explains the Iranian and Winnipegian influences that shaped his movie’s distinct visual motifs.
When filmmaker Matthew Rankin and his co-writers, Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, screened their moviein those cities, the Iranians who saw the film thought it had been made just for them and so did the Canadians. Universal Language ’s external color palette is purposefully drab, with lots of grays, beiges, and browns reflecting Winnipeg’s brutalist architecture in the film. Negar Nemati, our costume designer, found almost identical striped pants, and so we’re like, “That’s what the Christmas tree is gonna wear.” Paskievich remarked upon that when we showed it to him.
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