Filmmakers Guy Maddin, Matthew Rankin tell TIFF crowd about coming through Winnipeg's 'anti-mainstream' scene

Two Winnipeg-spawned filmmakers who have both offered up surreal visions of the Prairie city — albeit almost 20 years apart — talked to a Toronto International Film Festival crowd this week about the reception to their latest movies and what it's like to try to present Winnipeg to the world in film.

Guy Maddin and Matthew Rankin took to the stage of the Glenn Gould Studio in the CBC complex on Front Street on Tuesday — Day 6 of TIFF — for a discussion in the festival's industry conference section to a nearly full auditorium of more than 100 people.

Going in, such an event may carry the whiff of humdrum arts bureaucracy celebrating itself. Fortunately, neither Maddin nor Rankin were inclined to allow that vibe to gain purchase. They're both too self-effacing, for one thing.

Both have feature films playing at the festival. Maddin brings Rumours, a lovely surreal satire of geopolitical ritual in the face of Armageddon, with a starry cast including Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander and Charles Dance. The film, co-directed with Evan and Galen Johnson and set in an ancient German forest, was filmed in Hungary.

Rankin's entry is Universal Language, a comparatively modest affair with a cast of non-actors (including Rankin himself), filmed in Winnipeg — albeit a Winnipeg given a visually delightful Persian makeover, with signs and landmarks in Farsi and samovars adorning a neighbourhood Tim Hortons.

Between screening at Cannes and coming to TIFF, it was chosen as Canada's entry to the Academy Awards' best international feature category.

Both films played at the Cannes festival in April.

The Tuesday morning talk, moderated by TIFF programmer Kelly Boutsalis, acknowledged the sheer contrariness of the two filmmakers in the event synopsis, which noted Maddin and Rankin are "known for irreverent humour, nightmarish Canadiana, and surrealist esthetics," and promised an exploration of "Winnipeg's 'anti-mainstream' film scene and its enduring influence on their work and Canadian independent film at large."

On the stage, one could be lulled into perceiving a dynamic suggesting an old pro and an apprentice. It's not actually true: Maddin is 68, but Rankin's youthful looks notwithstanding, he is 44, and Universal Language is not his first ride at the TIFF rodeo.

His first feature, The Twentieth Century — a fantasia centred on a befuddled, virginal William Lyon Mackenzie King — played at TIFF in 2019, where it won an award for best Canadian first feature. It was preceded by animated shorts including The Tesla World Light (2017) and Mynarski Death Plummet (2014).

While Rankin filmed his latest in Winnipeg, he currently lives in Montreal.

A Winnipeg contingent was present in the audience, evident when Rankin mentioned the last time he and Maddin met in the Wagon Wheel Restaurant — a famed sandwich shop that shut down in 2012 — drawing a ripple of applause and whoops from the crowd.

"We understand the demographic here now," Maddin observed.

Moderator Boutsalis, who confessed she had never been to Winnipeg, asked the filmmakers about being lenses through which the world would view the city.

"I felt I was doing people a favour, showing them Winnipeg without them having to go, almost as a warning," Maddin quipped. "Save them the trip.

"But then Matthew seems to be up to something else," he said, in reference to the alternate Winnipeg Rankin conjures in Universal Language. "That's the Winnipeg I want to live in, not my Winnipeg."

Rankin acknowledged his vision of the city is unique, especially given an ever-rising tide of Christmas movies shot in the city.

"Winnipeg, as we know, is one of the great contributors to the Hallmark movement of Canadian art," Rankin said.

Up from 'the subhuman trench beneath Winnipeg'

On Tuesday morning, Rankin was getting ready for his film's Toronto premiere. Maddin had his already on Monday night, and he found the experience gratifying.

"The reception in Cannes was surprising," Maddin said. "I didn't know what we had made, whether it was funny or dramatic or dreamy, or none of the above, which would have been the worst-case scenario."

But "the audience there seemed pretty engaged.… I felt like I'd made The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The energy in the room was very good," he said.

Given that Rankin's film had not yet had its public screenings, it fell on Maddin to further praise Universal Language, which Rankin himself describes as a "declaration of love to Iranian cinema."

"It works," Maddin said. "The hybrid is so unlikely [but] it just gets airborne right away like a dream, like you've eaten too much Persian food and gone to sleep and dreamed of your hometown."

The achievement may be even more impressive, given that Rankin utilized a mostly non-professional cast.

"I made this film with my best friends … [and] my friends' parents," he said.

"We can all think of people around us who aren't necessarily actors, but they're performers," Rankin said. "They have timing. They can tell a story. They have a vibe … when you put them in front of a camera."

That cast stands in high contrast to Rumours, with Blanchett in particular impressing as one of Maddin's best gets ever.

That came about through producer Ari Aster (Hereditary), "another great American wunderkind filmmaker who made me feel old in the best possible way," Maddin said.

"He told me when he was a little kid, I was his favourite filmmaker, and could he help me now?

"So he helped get this project off the ground and he knew Cate Blanchett's phone number." Around the same time, she'd been featured in a video praising Maddin's My Winnipeg, he said.

"So Ari gave me her phone number and we talked, I remember, for 61 minutes," Maddin said. "And for 60 minutes, we just talked about other stuff, and then in the last minute, she said, 'I'll do the movie.'"

Having a name like Blanchett's attached to the movie, "all of a sudden, agents return your calls," Maddin said, explaining how the rest of the film's cast fell into place.

While lacking star power, Rankin found himself awed by the announcement that his film would represent Canada for Oscar consideration.

"It's very discombobulating," Rankin said. "I come from the subhuman trench beneath Winnipeg. It's really bizarre to be evaluated on that level, insofar as it's a measure of how the film is connecting.

"That's really beautiful and very humbling."

The Toronto International Film Festival runs through Sunday.