Matthew Rankin was born in Winnipeg and studied history at McGill and Université Laval. As a young filmmaker, he travelled 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. 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. He is not entirely certain where he lives but is frequently spotted in Montréal.
Filmography
2006 Où est Maurice? (short)
2008 I Dream of Driftwood (short)
2010 Negativipeg (short)
2012 Tabula Rasa (short)
2017 The Tesla World Light (short)
2019 The Twentieth Century
2024 Universal Language