Ramin Bahrani

Souléymane Solo es un taxista senegalés de 34 años. Un día es contratado por William, un setentañero estoico: en dos semanas, tiene que llevarle a Blowing Rock, el pico de una montaña rocosa. Pero Solo decide hacerse amigo de este viejo testarudo e intentar hacerle cambiar de planes antes de que llegue el día. A pesar de todo, Solo tiene que llevar finalmente a William a la cumbre de la montaña. Allí, donde el viento es suficientemente fuerte como para empujar a un hombre al cielo, el drama alcanza su clímax. (FILMAFFINITY)… (mehr)

A modest miracle of twenty-first-century neorealism, the acclaimed debut feature by Ramin Bahrani speaks quietly but profoundly to the experiences of those living on the margins of the American dream. Back in his home country of Pakistan, Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi, elements of whose own life story were woven into the script) was a famous rock star. Now a widower separated from his son and adrift in New York, he works long hours selling coffee and bagels from a Midtown Manhattan food cart, engaged in a Sisyphean search for human connection and a sense of purpose that seems perpetually just out of reach. A rare immigrant’s-eye view of a post-9/11 city suffused with subtle paranoia and xenophobia, Man Push Cart gives at once empathetic and clear-eyed expression to the everyday drama of human endurance. (source: The Criterion Collection)… (mehr)

For his acclaimed follow-up to Man Push Cart, Ramin Bahrani once again turned his camera on a slice of New York City rarely seen on-screen: Willets Point, Queens, an industrial sliver of automotive-repair shops that remains perpetually at risk of being redeveloped off the map. It’s within this precarious ecosystem that twelve-year-old Ale (Alejandro Polanco) must grow up fast, hustling in the neighborhood chop shops to build a more stable life for himself and his sister (Isamar Gonzales), even as their tenuous circumstances force each to compete with other struggling people and make desperate decisions. A deeply human story of a fierce but fragile sibling bond being tested by hardscrabble reality, Chop Shop tempers its sobering authenticity with flights of lyricism and hope. (source: The Criterion Collection)… (mehr)