Guy Maddin satire skewers G7 leaders. Cate Blanchett says it felt like a documentary

A new film from Canadian auteur Guy Maddin is a satire about G7 leaders that its star, Cate Blanchett, says made it feel "like we were making a documentary."

Even from her native Australia, Cate Blanchett has long felt a connection to Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin’s quirky, singular films.

The Oscar-winning actress admires the way the Manitoban auteur’s work — from 2007’s docu-fantasy “My Winnipeg” to 2017’s Alfred Hitchcock love letter “The Green Fog” — possesses “a strange universality” despite its idiosyncrasies.

“He can make a film that’s so specifically about Winnipeg and his childhood, and yet I watch it gasping and weeping and not fully comprehending what I'm seeing while on the other side of the world,” Blanchett said during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“I think that's astonishing. He's been working in this very particular underground way for so long, and if you look at the work of a lot of filmmakers who may not necessarily say they're influenced by Guy, you can see his influence.”

So when their mutual friend Ari Aster, the indie horror master behind “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” asked Blanchett if she’d like to star in Maddin’s new black comedy “Rumours,” which he produced, she couldn’t pass it up. The film hits theatres Friday.

“It was really wonderful having Cate on board because all of a sudden, casting got a lot easier,” Maddin recalled on a virtual call from Winnipeg.

“Agents didn't just blow our emails off.”