By Karl Quinn
A Canadian film inspired by Iranian cinema and shot entirely in Farsi has won the Bright Horizons competition at the Melbourne International Film Festival, netting its creative team a cash prize of $140,000, one of the biggest festival prizes anywhere in the world.
Speaking before the award was announced on Saturday night, Universal Language director Matthew Rankin said he knew exactly what he would do with the money if his film were to win.
“I think I’d blow it all on dry cleaning and Tim Tams,” said the 43-year-old from Montreal. “I’ve really become addicted.”
Bright Horizons winner Matthew Rankin (back row, centre) with fellow nominees (clockwise from back left) Leonardo Van Dijl, Mo Harawe, Gints Zilbalodis, Luna Carmoon and Charles Williams.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
To date he’s tried only the regular and double-coated varieties. “But there’s more, right? I’ve bought four packets so far to bring back for friends, but they might not survive the flight. I mean, it is 23 hours.”
American writer-director David Lowery, speaking on behalf of the Bright Horizons jury, said he and his fellow jurors selected Universal Language from the 10 feature films in competition because it most clearly demonstrated “that the future of cinema is bright indeed”.
It was, he said, “a film whose cultural specificity transcends borders, whose cinematic playfulness is matched equally by its sensitivity, and whose very form is in conversation with cinema past, present and future. This is why the Bright Horizons Award goes to Universal Language by Matthew Rankin.”
Winnipeg by way of Tehran: An image from Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language.Credit: MIFF
Ila Firouzabadi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rankin and fellow Iranian expat Pirouz Nemati, said the idea for the film grew out of the director’s love of Iranian cinema, particularly the works of Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon) and Abbas Kiarostami (Where Is the Friend’s House?, Close-Up).
“And then we realised, let’s do something not Canadian, not Iranian, but something from completely another world, or a mixture of everything. So we’re not calling this a Canadian movie or an Iranian movie, we just call it something of an intersection between all of this,” Firouzabadi said.
Almost a universal language?
“Exactly, yes.”
The movie, shot in Winnipeg but with many markers that seem to locate it in 1980s Tehran, has already made an impression on the international festival circuit, having collected the audience prize in Cannes in May.
Rankin with Universal Language co-writer Ila Firouzabadi.Credit: Theresa Harrison/MIFF
“That was really beautiful,” said Firouzabadi, who said winning would allow her to devote more time to her work as a sculptor and installation artist. “We were just friends, and we did this movie from the heart. So when it’s connected with other people’s hearts, for us it is beautiful. But now we’re in a section of competition that is more professional, and that’s interesting too.”
Also presented on Saturday night was the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award, a $70,000 cash prize given to an outstanding Australian creative within the festival line-up. It went to Jaydon Martin for his low-budget black and white film Flathead.
The Uncle Jack Charles Award, named after the late Indigenous actor and recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creatives in the festival, went to the extended reality work kajoo yannaga (come on let’s walk together) by director April Phillips. The award is worth $20,000 in cash and $25,000 in legal services.
The $10,000 MIFF Schools Youth Jury Award, presented by Collarts, went to Maria Zanetti for Alemania, a coming-of-age story from Argentina.
The MIFF Audience Choice Award, voted for by festival goers, was shared by two Australian documentaries: Left Write Hook, about a boxing and writing program run for female survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and Voice, an inside look at an Indigenous youth-led campaign to garner support for the referendum in 2023.
MIFF will present encore screenings of Universal Language and Left Write Hook on Sunday. Flathead screens in Echuca as part of MIFF Regional. Details: miff.com.au.
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