Miami Film Festival is proud to honor Iranian-American writer, director, and producer Ramin Bahrani with a 2022 Precious Gem Award.
Bahrani’s films have pursued a line of independent questioning and foregrounded diverse characters. His first film, Man Push Cart (2005), told the story of a former Pakistani rock star struggling to build a new life in America, scraping by as a street food vendor in Manhattan. The film’s singular focus on the harsh reality of new immigrant life made a heady debut at the Venice Film Festival and earned comparisons to Scorsese, Bresson, and the Italian neo-realists.
His sophomore feature, Chop Shop (2007), won similar acclaim, taking the perspective of a 12-year-old Latino street scrapper surviving in the margins of Queens. Bahrani’s transcendent third feature, Goodbye Solo (2008), brought him back to his hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to tell the story of yet another immigrant, this time a Senegalese cab driver trying to build a better life for his young family.
In the next wave of his career, Bahrani continued to pursue a variety of subjects and scales, as he explored the echo chamber of the American dream. Notable successes included the Florida-set 99 Homes (2014), starring Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon, about the corruption-induced collapse of the housing market during the Great Recession of 2008-2010. In 2021, Bahrani received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for The White Tiger, a drama exploring class exploitation in India, with resonance that boomed around the world.
Late in the 2010s, Bahrani began to explore documentary filmmaking with several short films, including the riveting Blood Kin (2018). In 2022, Bahrani unveiled a career-first – his first feature-length documentary, the acclaimed 2nd Chance.
Ramin Bahrani will be honored with the Precious Gem Award at an in-person presentation just prior to the Florida premiere of 2nd Chance. A moderated conversation will follow the award presentation and screening.