Review by Bilge Ebiri.
With 2006's Man Push Cart and his latest, Chop Shop, Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani has made a good case for himself as the neorealist poet laureate of New York's immigrant underside. Shot with breathtaking immediacy and featuring casts of non-professionals in real-life locations, Bahrani's films give narrative shape and compelling character shadings to documentary worlds. The result is something that feels like a new language being born, even though it owes a conscious debt to both non-fiction filmmakers like Shirley Clarke and realist narrative masters like John Cassavetes and Vittorio De Sica. Which is all just a fancy way of saying you really, really should not miss Chop Shop.
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