Film Forum

Bassam Tariq is a doc and narrative filmmaker. He’s currently set to direct MARVEL’s BLADE, starring Mahershala Ali. His debut fiction feature MOGUL MOWGLI, starring Riz Ahmed, premiered at Berlinale 2020 and won the International Critics Prize. He is a TED Fellow and was named Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film." His previous film GHOSTS OF SUGAR LAND (2019) won the Short Film Jury Prize at Sundance and released as a Netflix Original. His first feature documentary, THESE BIRDS WALK, premiered at SXSW and is distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories. THESE BIRDS WALK was named by IndieWire, The Playlist and Sights + Sound Magazine as one of the best movies of 2013. It was also named one of the 50 best foreign films of the 21st century by The New Yorker.  In 2015, he was a fellow of Sundance's Art Of Non Fiction Residency and participated in the 2017 Sundance Screenwriters' Lab for his first narrative feature. In 2019, he accepted the Field of Vision Fellowship helmed by Laura Poitras. He lives between New York, London and Houston with his young and supportive family.

Riz Ahmed is an Academy Award® nominated actor, writer, producer, and musician, as well as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People (listed in 2017). Themes of inclusion and representation run throughout Riz's work as a creator and activist, from his roles in projects such as SOUND OF METAL, The Night of, and MOGUL MOWGLI, to his essay in Nikesh Shukla's “The Good Immigrant,” his 2017 address to Parliament on diversity in the creative industries, and his appointment to the Mayor of London's 2021 Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. Whether he's using his power as a producer to bring refugee narratives to our screens via his production company Left Handed Film, writing about the inequalities of the Covid pandemic as contributing editor of British Vogue, or exploring Britishness through his critically-acclaimed music release “The Long Goodbye,” the Gold List A100 honoree is driven by a mission to stretch culture, reimagine our narratives and landscapes of belonging, and include rather than divide.

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