Salute, Bahrani

Illustration/Uday Mohite

My heart skipped a beat when the opening credits of The White Tiger, Ramin Bahrani's film that dropped on Netflix last week, starring Priyanka Chopra, Rajkummar Rao and Adarsh Gourav, listed Bahrani's Noruz Films as a producer. It sounded close to Navroze, Parsi/Persian/Iranian New Year that the Parsis celebrate in India, and instantly made a soul connection between Bahrani and India. The film is currently on JioCinema (see my column White Tiger bares its claws, January 24). Bahrani, an American director of Iranian origin, has a very impressive body of work. Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert called Bahrani "the new great American director" and became his good friend; and legendary German director Werner Herzog grew fond enough of Bahrani, to lend his voice for Bahrani's short film Plastic Bag.

Bahrani has directed about 19 films and TV series, many with a keen empathy for people on the margins, for the outsider. Born in North Carolina, US, Bahrani did film studies at Columbia and spent three years in Iran. Director, producer, writer and editor, his films include The White Tiger, 99 Homes, Fahrenheit 451 and Man Push Cart. His blazing achievements include Man Push Cart (Venice, Sundance, London Film Festivals); Chop Shop (Cannes, Berlin, Toronto Film Festivals), Goodbye Solo (FIPRESCI prize for Best Film, Venice Film Festival, Toronto); 99 Homes (Venice, Toronto Film Festivals; Michael Shannon earned a Golden Globe nomination); At Any Price (Venice Film Festival); and Bahrani has also served on the Venice Film Festival jury.

To me, Bahrani is part of the larger international cinemascape, that includes Iranian directors like Asghar Farhadi and his Everybody Knows (Todos lo Saben), starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, made in Spanish. Bahrani's 99 Homes features top American actors Michael Shannon, Laura Dern and Andrew Garfield, and his other films have featured Americans/‘outsiders' with origins in Asia, Africa and Latin America, struggling to make a living - or fully set in another country, like India. His Man Push Cart is about a Pakistani-American working a coffee cart in Manhattan. Chop Shop is about a Latino kid trying to survive amid a vast auto parts bazaar in New York. Goodbye Solo features a taxi driver from Senegal in Winston-Salem, US. In 99 Homes, an American single father, evicted from his home for defaulting on payments, struggles to get it back, by evicting others for the same real estate broker who threw him out.

In fact, Bahrani has close Indian/Pakistani/South Asian and wider interests, going back a long way. Aravind Adiga, Booker Prize-winning Indian author of The White Tiger, dedicated his 2008 book to Bahrani, also his good friend, who later directed it as a film, entirely shot in India.

The film is about an ambitious, low caste, low class Indian driver, working for a rich Delhi family, who is determined to rise up the economic ladder. It is produced by Bahrani and Mukul Deora; Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay is an executive producer. Bahrani's 99 Homes was produced by Chennai-born, American producer Ashok Amritraj's Hyde Park Entertainment, and Image Nation, Abu Dhabi. His Man Push Cart, that explored the post-9/11 Muslim immigrant experience in America, starred Pakistani-American actor Ahmad Razvi. It is about a former Pakistani rock star, who now sells coffee from his push cart in Manhattan, and observes his Sisyphean struggle to survive (the film is easily available online).

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com