Matthew Rankin was born in Winnipeg and studied history at McGill and Université Laval. As a young filmmaker, he traveled to Iran with the deluded hope of studying cinema with the great Iranian masters. While this naïve effort failed, Matthew is the director of some forty short animated, documentary and fiction films which have been presented at Sundance, SXSW, Annecy, TIFF, the Berlinale, Cannes Critics Week and on the Criterion Channel. His first feature, The Twentieth Century, was awarded the 2020 FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and proclaimed Best Canadian First Feature at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. His Persian–French bilingual drama Universal Language won the inaugural Audience Award at the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 77th Cannes Film Festival in 2024. Matthew has variously worked as a commercial animator, editor, actor, Cornish Monkey Shed Cleaner and GT6 Media Officer for the Dominion Parks & Historic Sites of Canada.