Directed by Sultan Sharrief
For almost 60 years, Bilal’s family has run a taxi business—known to everybody in the neighborhood as “the stand”—started by his grandfather. But times are getting tougher: there’s more competition, and Bilal is thinking of leaving the stand and going off to university.
Based on a true story, Bilal’s Stand is a delightful and moving look at a world rarely seen: a stable, loving, black Muslim family, struggling to keep a business alive amid both internal and external pressures. For his crew, debut director Sultan Sharrief used many of the students from EFEX, the inner-city outreach program he founded in his native Detroit, as well as many nonprofessional actors, some of them playing themselves.
2009. USA. 83 min.
BUY TICKETS ONLINE
Fri Mar 26: 9:00 (MOMA)
Sat Mar 27: 5:30 (FSLC)
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
At 25, Sultan Sharrief is already a multi-award-winning filmmaker and producer with several features under his belt. At 19 he produced The Spiral Project, a 35mm feature film nominated for an MTV Movie Award. While studying at the University of Michigan, he started EFEX: Encouraging the Filmmaking EXperience, a filmmaking project intended to foster a partnership between local artists, Detroit high school students, and the University of Michigan. Sharrief then wrote and directed Bilal’s Stand, which has been accepted to the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Not stopping anytime soon, he is set to shoot another feature, The Flat Line, this summer.
