Especially for RA Month ’25, AFFR presents the pre-premiere of a film that is already seen as a ‘future cult classic’: Universal Language. The film will only be released in Dutch cinemas after the summer, so this is your chance to see it now, in the unique setting of the RA Month festival heart!

What if the Canadian city of Winnipeg were Persian? This is the absurdist premise of Matthew Rankin’s film Universal Language. With dry humor and gorgeous cinematography we follow two young girls trying to get a frozen banknote out of the ice, a guide who leads a bored group of tourists along the city’s dullest attractions and a civil servant (played by Rankin himself) who desperately tries to get home.

This completely idiosyncratic experience makes us ask unironic questions about the importance of language, community and culture. In this way, the film offers a rock-solid antidote to xenophobia. Universal Language knows how to entertain but also to move and it rightfully won the Cannes Audience Award.

The film is an absolute must-see for anyone who loves the dry and absurdist humour of Wes Anderson, Guy Maddin and Iranian New Wave cinema, – and, according to leading cultural magazine Vulture, was ‘The Best Movie at Cannes Last Year’.