•
89m
Universal Language
Book Tickets
No upcoming sessions
Synopsis
Coming to Luna Leederville.
Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a large sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-absurd walking tour of Winnipeg monuments and historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Quebec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother. Time, geography and identities crossfade, interweave and collide into a surreal comedy of misdirection.
Structured like a Venn diagram — at the point of confluence between Jacques Tati and Abbas Kiarostami’s The Koker Trilogy — Universal Language is at once a diary film, an absurdist city symphony and a welling-up of confinement-era emotion exploring the mysterious interzone where one person ends and the rest of the world begins. An elusive, half-remembered dream of home, solitude, our responsibilities to others and the wild turkeys that haunt us.
FESTIVALS & AWARDS
2024 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | Official Selection: Directors' Fortnight
2024 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | Winner: Best Canadian Discovery Award
2024 MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | Winner: Bright Horizons Award
Opening Date
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Rating
G
Length
89m
Genre
New Release
Reviews
A magnificent film, one that feels warm and familiar even as we realize just how startlingly original it is.
★★★★ As disorienting as it is delightful.
Deeply weird, delightfully strange, inspiringly imaginative and genuinely heartfelt.