Universal Language will be screened exclusively during Rotterdam Architecture Month, on Friday 20 June. Tickets are available through the AFFR website.
Over Universal Language
What if the Canadian city of Winnipeg were Persian? This is the absurdist premise of Matthew Rankin’s film Universal Language. With dry humor and gorgeous cinematography we follow two young girls trying to get a frozen banknote out of the ice, a guide who leads a bored group of tourists along the city’s dullest attractions and a civil servant (played by Rankin himself) who desperately tries to get home.
This completely idiosyncratic experience makes us ask unironic questions about the importance of language, community and culture. In this way, the film offers a rock-solid antidote to xenophobia. Universal Language knows how to entertain but also to move and it rightfully won the Cannes Audience Award.
The film is an absolute must-see for anyone who loves the dry and absurdist humour of Wes Anderson, Guy Maddin and Iranian New Wave cinema, made the shortlist for the Oscars and, according to leading cultural magazine Vulture, was ‘The Best Movie at Cannes Last Year’. The film will only be released in Dutch cinemas after the summer, so this is the chance to see it now, in the unique setting of the RA Month festival heart!
‘The Best Movie at Cannes’
– Vulture
‘A gently funny, gently moving, slightly surrealist comedy’
– New York Times
About Rotterdam Architectuur Month
After the success of Do the Right Thing and Silent Running, AFFR is again part of the Rotterdam Architecture Month ‘25. Rotterdam Architecture Month is the Netherlands’ largest architecture festival about the future of the city. Throughout June, the city of Rotterdam will be the backdrop for dozens of lectures, tours, exhibitions, films with the festival centre in Schiemond as the vibrant hub. See the full programme at rotterdamarchitectuurmaand.nl
(photography filmscreening AFFR during RA Month ’23 en ’24: Aad Hoogendoorn)
