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…