Directors’ Fortnight: Matthew Rankin’s ‘Universal Language’ Wins Inaugural Audience Award; Europa Cinema & SACD Prize Winners
Universal Language Metafilms
Canadian director Matthew Rankin’s Persian and French-language drama Universal Language has won the inaugural Audience Award of Directors’ Fortnight.
This is the first official prize launched by Directors’ Fortnight which does not have a jury. The €7,500 ($8,100) cash award, is also the first audience award to be launched in Cannes, across the Official Selection and the parallel sections.
It is being sponsored by the Chantal Akerman Foundation, which preserves the legacy of the director who retained strong ties with Directors’ Fortnight throughout her career, after screening breakthrough film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce – 1080 Brussel in the section in 1975.
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Described as taking place “somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg”, Universal Language intertwines multiple characters.
Gradeschoolers Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen in the winter ice and try to claim it, while Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists through the monuments and historic sites of Winnipeg and Matthew quits his meaningless job in a Québecois government office and sets out upon an enigmatic journey to visit his mother.
It is Rankin’s second feature after surrealist dark comedy The Twentieth Century, which won the Berlinale Fipresci Award in 2020 and Best Canadian debut award in TIFF Midnight Madness 2019.
Rankin was previously in Cannes with The Tesla World Light, which premiered in Critic’s Week in 2017.
The feature is produced by Sylvain Corbeil’s Metafilms, the indie production company behind the films of Xavier Dolan and hits such as The Nature of Love, Falcon Lake, Felix and Meira. Oscilloscope Labs are Executive Producers and also have U.S. rights. Brussels-based sales company Best Friend Forever has U.S. rights.
Collateral Prizes
In other collateral prizes, Spanish director Jonás Trueba’s The Other Way Around (Volveréis) has won the Europa Cinemas Label as Best European film in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
The prize is judged by four members of the Europa Cinema network representing independent exhibitors operating 3,121 screens across Europe. Under the prize, the film will receive the support of these cinemas as it goes on release.
The prize was announced ahead of the Directors’ Fortnight closing ceremony on Thursday evening.
It is being sponsored by the Chantal Akerman Foundation, which preserves the legacy of the director who retained strong ties with Directors’ Fortnight throughout her career, after screening breakthrough film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce – 1080 Brussel in the section in 1975.
The prize was announced ahead of the Directors’ Fortnight closing ceremony on Thursday evening.
French writers guild SACD’s prize reserved for the best French film in the selection went to late director Sophie Fillière’s final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui stars as woman whose life starts to unravel as she turns 55.
Post-production on film, which opened the section, was completed posthumously by Fillière’s children after the director died shortly after completing film.
“We chose the film whose heart beat the strongest, and continued to move us long after… A daring, delicate, unpredictable film, the culmination of a work full of dissonance and side steps, as its director liked to say,” said director, screenwriter and SACD cinema administrator Anne Villacèque on announcing the winner.
“A film that walks on the edge of the abyss, clumsily, but always valiantly, sowing piles of little white pebbles along its path like so many magic formulas to help us resist. Resisting the darkness of the world, the solitude of early gray mornings, this female dog of life that runs away… it’s Sophie’s last battle cry, her viaticum for eternity, and her best joke.”
The film is produced by Julie Salvador at Christmas in July and sold internationally by Party Film Sales.
Recent winners of the SACD award include Pierre Creton’s A Prince, Thomas Salvador’s The Mountain, Vincent Maël Cardona’s Magnetic Beats, Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl and Pierre Salvadori’s The Trouble With You.