Riz Ahmed is a 2021 Oscar, Golden Globe, SAG, and BAFTA Award nominee for his performance in Amazon Prime Video’s SOUND OF METAL, directed by Darius Marder. Ahmed won the NBR and IFP Gotham Awards for Best Actor, more than fourteen 2021 critics groups, and was named British/Irish Actor of the Year (2020 London Critics’ Circle Awards), since the film’s premiere at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival.
Left Handed Film, Ahmed’s production company, recently signed a first-look TV deal with Amazon Studios. The company has two films nominated for 2022 Academy Awards, including THE LONG GOODBYE which is nominated for Best Short Film and Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s FLEE, which made history as the first movie to earn Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and International Feature. Left Handed Films’ most recent film, MOGUL MOWGLI, won the Fipresci International Critics’ Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, was nominated for ‘Best British Film’ at the BAFTA Awards, and received six BIFA nominations, with the film taking home ‘Best Debut Screenwriter’ for Ahmed and ‘Best Music’. In the works are EXIT WEST (Netflix), in partnership with the Obamas, Higher Ground Productions and Russo, AGBO, a modern take on Hamlet, and the comedy series THE SON OF GOOD FORTUNE (Amazon).
Ahmed’s musical journey spans two decades across rap, techno, residencies, a successful American band Swet Shop Boys, and most recently, critically acclaimed “The Long Goodbye,” accompanied by a short film of the same name.
As a vocal advocate for inclusion, Ahmed published an award-winning piece in the Nikesh Shukla, described as “essential reading.” In 2017, he spoke at the British Parliament’s House of Commons about diversity and representation and graced TIME’s 100 Most Influential People cover.