We are a bit late in acknowledging the Canadian films at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. There is definitely a separation between Cannes and when we start getting excited for TIFF and (lately) the Telefilm Canada announcement for the nominee for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. This update helps bridge some of that separation.
Matthew Rankin is back with a new film called Universal Language | Une langue universelle. This reviewer loved the new film.
"But in Universal Language's slightly tilted version of the world, Winnipeg and Iran have melded. Everybody speaks Farsi. They sing Persian songs. They drink their tea by putting a sugar cube in their mouth first."
Rankin blew us away with The Twentieth Century (2019). That film won 3 Canadian Screen Awards (art direction/production design; costume design; hair) and won (perhaps) the last ever Best Canadian First Feature Film award from the Toronto International Film Festival.
Rankin acts in Universal Language and can also be seen in our recently reviewed Canadian film Cette maison | This House (2022).
Simple comme Sylvain | The Nature of Love wins the César for Best Foreign Film
Canadian film case study: Cette Maison
The Vulture story notes that Oscilloscope handled U.S. distribution for The Twentieth Century and will handle Universal Language | Une langue universelle.
The film would be eligible for the Best International Feature Film at the Oscars since the languages are French and Persian. Telefilm Canada has picked some "interesting" films of late for the category.
RUMOURS, a Guy Maddin movie in which Cate Blanchett plays the German Chancellor at a G7 summit menaced by giant brains and bog monsters, is somehow only the second-most delightfully weird Winnipeg movie at #Cannes. The winner and champeen: Matthew Rankin’s UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
— Sam Adams (@SamuelAAdams) May 18, 2024
Both The Shrouds (David Cronenberg) and The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi) were in official selection. The Roaming (Mathieu Pradat) and Telos I (Emil Dam Seidel and Dorotea Saykaly) were in the new immersive competition. Rumours by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson is part of the selection that was out of competition.
You might recall that 2 of the highlighted Canadian films from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival were Simple comme Sylvain | The Nature of Love from Monia Chokri and Zarrar Kahn's feature debut with In Flames. Chokri went on to win the Cesar for Best Foreign Film.
Canadian film notebook: Évelyne Brochu gets caught in a love triangle in French Girl
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
Oh, Canada played at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, though the film is definitely not a Canadian film. Richard Gere plays the older version of a writer who goes to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. Uma Thurman is also in the film, written and directed by Paul Schrader.
Leonard Fife, the character played by Gere and Jacob Elordi as a younger version, is a documentary filmmaker living in Montréal.
Ironically, a film about running away to Canada was not actually shot in Canada. I don't have a crystal ball but I doubt his character will reflect someone who has lived in Canada, much less Montréal, for well over 50 years. Hopefully, the character will be more "Canadian" than Sandra Bullock's lame presentation of a Canadian in The Proposal.
Oh Canada is based from the 2021 novel Foregone by Russell Banks, who wrote The Sweet Hereafter. Atom Egoyan adapted that novel for his 1997 Canadian film of the same name that netted Egoyan a Best Director nomination from the Oscars.
photo credit: Universal Language | Une langue universelle
Twitter capture: @SamuelAAdams
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