Amir has been a documentary filmmaker for 20 years.
He recently completed his first debut feature length theatrical documentary, We Are Many, made over nine years. It has been critically acclaimed and acquired by Universal Pictures for international distribution (excluding N. America). The film tells the story of the largest mobilisation of humanity in history, the worldwide protests against the Iraq War on 15 February 2003.
He was most recently Co-Producer on Coup 53 (2019), alongside Producers Paul Zaentz (The English Patient, Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and Ahmad Kiarostami, together with multi-Oscar winning Editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, The English Patient). It is a feature documentary about the CIA/MI6 coup against the Iranian PM Mossadegh in 1953.
He was Associate Producer on the documentary feature Studio 17: The Lost Reggae Tapes (2019), which was acquired by the BBC. He is currently at work as a Producer on a feature documentary about former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.
For 10 years between 1996 and 2006, he made documentary films for the BBC and international broadcasters, including flagship BBC series covering the arts, history, features, and current affairs, namely Arena, Timewatch, Picture This, Correspondent and Newsnight. In films that have received critical acclaim Amir has covered the life and death of Concorde, the crazy world of awards and awards ceremonies, Jimi Hendrix’s house in London, music under Apartheid, the arms trade with Will Self, sex change in Iran and the horrors of chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq war. Two of his documentaries have been nominated for an Amnesty International Award and One World Broadcasting Trust Award.
Amir has also worked for BBC Radio, producing and presenting programmes on a range of subjects, from business, to comedy and poetry. In 2003, Amir was selected as a participant in the first ever intake of the Berlinale Talent Campus at the Berlin Film Festival, and his entry ‘53’ was selected for production by Wim Wenders and received the Runner Up Award.
Amir’s television career began in 1991 with a TV investigation into the failures of the American Patriot missile system in the first Gulf War. This led to a two year BBC Graduate Production Traineeship between 1992-1994. His published journalism has appeared in The Guardian, and New Statesman, New Scientist, Business Traveller and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
As an undergraduate, Amir wrote a short political drama that won the inaugural David Harlech Democracy Prize, sponsored by The Guardian, and the resulting short film was aired on Channel 4 and judged by Sir David Puttnam (Producer: The Killing Fields). He is a voting member of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts).
He graduated with a First Class (Hons.) degree in Biology from Nottingham University, and an M.Phil in International Relations from Cambridge University, funded by an ESRC Scholarship. Amir was born in Iran and arrived in England aged nine, where he was granted refugee status. He eventually settled there and has lived in London ever since. Amir can solve the Rubik’s Cube, which gives him no end of joy!