“Has roots in postwar Italian Neo-realism. Both poetic and clear-sighted. A subtle, artful fable.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“Raw and probing. A low-budget vérité triumph. You can’t shake it off as just a movie.” – David Edelstein, New York magazine

“Ram”in Bahrani, the acclaimed writer-director of MAN PUSH CART (2005)... CHOP SHOP (is) a dexterous update of neorealist strategies.
Bahrani is marvelously alert to texture (mud, aluminum, birdshit and tone (the bustle of the workday, the emptiness of the night).
An engrossing off-hand portrait of an entire quasi-underground economy. CHOP SHOP resolves its poetry and plot in an abrupt, pitch-perfect non-denouement.”
– Nathan Lee, Village Voice

“Exceptional! A fiction film with all the guts of a good documentary and all the distillation of a poem.” – Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

"A mastery of style" – Entertainment Weekly

– David Fear, Time Out NY

“Ramin Bahrani’s excellent follow-up to MAN PUSH CART reveals him to be no flash in the pan;
this one, about impoverished Queens kids who work in the garages around Shea Stadium reveals an even stronger facility with actors and locales.”
– Time Out NY

“Triggered a standing ovation at the film’s Cannes premiere. Updates the neorealist European traditions of Rossellini and Bresson.
(The film exhibits) documentary clarity and a bracing lack of sentimentality.”
– Logan Hill, New York magazine

"A triumph for all involved, none more so than Polanco, whose raw swagger and stillness glow in Bahrani's unblinking eye." – Stu VanAirsdale, The Reeler

Ramin Bahrani, after his auspicious debut (MAN PUSH CART), sets his story of a 12-year-old Latino boy and his older sister in the no-man’s-land that is Willet’s Point, Queens, a 20-block stretch of junkyards and chop shops (where stolen cars are dismantled for parts), overshadowed by Shea Stadium’s giant billboard: “Make Dreams Happen.” Perhaps it is because Bahrani and co-author Bahareh Azimi are both of Iranian descent that they are able to conjure up an outsider’s reality with such palpable compassion and realism. Without a smidgeon of sentimentality, CHOP SHOP suggests that for many New York City is closer to a third world country than the glittering jewel in the crown of a land of infinite opportunity.

USA • 2007 • 85 MINUTES • KOCH LORBER FILMS