Amir Amirani

Amir has been a documentary filmmaker for over 25 years, for international broadcasters and theatrical release. He is the founder of Visible Features.

He is an Executive Producer and Producer on “In The Eye Of The Storm – The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis” which will have its World Premiere at HotDocs 2022. He was most recently Co-Producer on Coup 53 (2019), which had its World Premiere at Telluride in 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, featuring Ralph Fiennes, about the CIA/MI6 coup against the Iranian PM Mossadegh in 1953. It is now one of only 64 films in history with a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

He produced and directed his debut feature length documentary,  We Are Many (2015), over nine years. It has been critically acclaimed, and was acquired by Universal Pictures for international distribution in 2016, following a release in over 130 theatres across the U.K . The film tells the story of the largest mobilization of humanity in history, the worldwide protests against the Iraq War on 15 February 2003. ‘We Are Many’ was named by The Nation magazine as ‘The Most Valuable Documentary of 2015 in their Most Valuable Progressives 2015 Honor Roll. The Guardian included it in the Top 10 Documentaries of 2015

He was Associate Producer on the documentary feature Studio 17: The Lost Reggae Tapes (2019), which was acquired by the BBC .

For 10 years between 1996 and 2006, he directed documentary films for the BBC and international broadcasters , for 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 the supersonic jet Concorde, the strange world of awards and awards ceremonies, Jimi Hendrix’s house in London, music under Apartheid, the arms trade explored by 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 occasionally indulges an interest in radio and has produced and presented programmes for BBC Radio 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 as a researcher in independent television in London followed, by a 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 full 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.