Virtual Award Presentation & Exclusive Conversation with Riz Ahmed and Variety’s Film Awards Editor, Clayton Davis.
Miami Film Festival is proud to present Sound of Metal star Riz Ahmed with our inaugural Impact Award, honoring his incisive, brilliant performance in our GEMS Audience Award-winning film and its significance for the recovery community within the Deaf community, which is often invisible in our society.
In Sound of Metal, punk band drummer Ruben begins to lose his hearing. When a doctor tells him his condition will worsen, he thinks his career and life are over. His girlfriend and bandmate Lou checks the former addict into a rehab for the deaf, hoping it will prevent relapse and help him adapt to his new life. After being welcomed and accepted just as he is, Ruben must choose between his new normal and the life he once knew. For his performance in the film, Ahmed has received numerous Best Actor accolades from critics and film organizations including Gotham Awards, London Critics’ Circle Film Awards, Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, and San Diego Film Critics Society, among others.
Ahmed is a critically acclaimed actor, writer, creator, producer, musician, director, and activist. He became one of Hollywood’s most sought-after artists following HBO’s The Night Of, for which he won an Emmy Award. His feature film credits include Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Sisters Brothers, Venom, Four Lions, and Nightcrawler. Mogul Mowgli, a film co-written, starring, and produced by Ahmed, won the 2020 Berlin Film Festival Fipresci International Critics’ Prize and won a 2021 British Independent Film Award for Ahmed as best debut screenwriter.
Ahmed's musical journey has spanned two decades across battle rap, techno, artistic residencies, the successful American band Swet Shop Boys, and most recently, his critically acclaimed 2020 release The Long Goodbye. Its nine tracks are a breakup album like no other—songs about being dumped by the country you call home. Ahmed draws from hip-hop as well as the South Asian qawwali tradition, mixing rap, melody, and spoken word.