Sunday, January 19, 2025
WHERE IS MY FRIEND’S HOUSE?
Cinémathèque québécoise
| 5:00 PM: | Une langue universelle |
| (6:30 PM): | A Shrine |
We borrow the title of Kiarostami’s film quite literally; here are two films that reach towards each other with open hands. Where is my friend’s house, indeed? Is it in the Venn diagram of personal quests that Rankin sets against an alternative Canada where an ingenious shift in language reveals the absurdity inherent to Canada’s so-called solitudes? Or, on the other, in the project of an expatriate filmmaker seizing the tools of his trade to extend a hand to his community, scattered across a new, wintry land? Two bittersweet, comic strolls, mirrors of each other, confront monolingualism and alienation; where one loses the path to better find it again.
- The screening will be followed by a debate moderated by Mathieu Li-Goyette (Executive Director and programmer) with filmmakers Matthew Rankin and Abdolreza Kahani along with Syrian journalist and film critic Nabil Mohamad from Liberté magazine.
DOUBLE BILL
Une langue universelle
Matthew Rankin
89 minutes, Quebec, 2024
French & Farsi
It’s winter in an alternate Canada where Farsi is commonly spoken. Two children, Negin and Nazgol find a large 500 riel note trapped in the ice and with it, the promise of warmer socks. At the same time, tour guide Massoud undertakes an increasingly absurd tour of the city of Winnipeg’s historic monuments and sites as a way to maintain the dream of a national history alive. Meanwhile, Matthew Rankin leaves his job at the Quebec government to undertake a mysterious journey back home to visit his mother, chasing the promise of familial reconciliation. Geography and cultural identities intertwine in this surreal and referential comedy, pitched somewhere betweeen Kiarostami and Tati, but unfolding as only Rankin knows how: with an adroit mixture of languages, fantasy and a bitter, yet gentle humour that can only be drawn from life’s great disappointments.
With Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati, Mani Soleymanlou
Festivals: Directors’ Fortnight 2024, TIFF 2024
- Filmmaker in attendance
A Shrine
Abdolreza Kahani
82 minutes, Quebec / Iran / France, 2024
Farsi & English, with English subtitltes
North American Premiere
Influenced by a friend, a car mechanic suffering from back pain devises a get-rich-quick scheme to make his life easier: he builds a religious shrine out of imported wood, puts the shrine in a mobile home, and takes the road on the periphery of Montreal and townships. This subversive DIY comedy, shot with a cellphone and a cast of non-professional actors by Abdolreza Kahani, offers an intriguing and offbeat window into the diasporic Iranian community of Quebec, and the soul of a delightfully pathetic man, torn between morality and opportunity, heaven and earth.
With Nima Sadr, Mojan Safari, Farhad Zarei, Kamelia Simab, Keyvan Safari, Masoud Motehaver
Festivals: Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024
- Filmmaker in attendance
