Chop Shop

Chop Shop has received critical praise since its premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of 2008, lauded for encompassing "a lyricism at its heart, an unsentimental, soulful appreciation of the grace that resides in even the meanest struggle for survival" (The New York Times).

A street-smart orphan determined to make a better life for himself and his sixteen year-old sister spends his days working in an auto body repair shop in director Ramin Bahrani's gritty coming of age drama. Alejandro may be a young boy on the verge of adolescence, but his tough persona and driving ambition give the impression of a man twice his age. As with many street kids Alejandro has been forced to mature before his time. Now, in a disheveled junkyard on the outer edge of Queens, New York, one boy will learn what it means to become a man as he sets out to build a brighter future for the only family he knows. This is the third feature by acclaimed filmmaker Ramin Bahrani.