Alienation and empathy themes shine at MAMI Film Festival screenings

The answer to alienation then is in freeing oneself of expectations. Why be beautiful when you can be free?

A third of the way into Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, one stops wanting to know the film’s secret and begins swimming in its mystery instead. In the Canadian director’s sophomore full-length feature, Winnipeg is indistinguishable from Tehran, a Persian teacher scolds students in French, a Manitoban breaks into fluent Farsi, Tim Hortons sells chai sadeh, men play women, women play men. Cultures bend and identities coalesce with absurd ease to show what the present moment could look like if it emphasised unifying care over an isolating individuality.

 

A sense of alienation — within and around characters — bound Universal Language