Ramin Bahrani is an American director and screenwriter. Film critic Roger Ebert listed Bahrani's film Chop Shop as the sixth-best film of the 2000s and hailed Bahrani as "the new director of the decade." Bahrani was the recipient of the prestigious 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. Bahrani is also a professor of film directing at the Columbia University School of the Arts, his alma mater.