Taghi Amirani

Taghi Amirani is a documentary filmmaker and TED Senior Fellow 2010. He most recently released Coup 53, which has received critical acclaim with a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Taghi Amirani read physics at Nottingham University where for his final year project, instead of doing something in the lab, he made Shades of Black, a documentary about an imaginary journey into a black hole. While completing a postgraduate film and TV course at the University of Bristol, he made Mechanics of Love, a low-budget B&W silent comedy. This charming but somewhat over-ambitious homage to Buster Keaton via Woody Allen landed him his first job at Thames TV as a researcher working on educational design and technology documentaries.

In 1989, he made his debut as a producer-director with Earth Calling Basingstoke, a warm quirky look at the extraterrestrial lives of English amateur astronomers. Basingstoke, made for Channel 4′s flagship science series Equinox, was received with critical acclaim and launched Taghi as a director. He has since made 36 films, two fiction shorts, and a handful of commercials.

Taghi has been a jury member at the International Emmys, Royal Television Society, One World Media Awards, and Sheffield International Documentary Festival where he’s also a member of the Advisory Committee. In 2006, he ran the New York Marathon and raised $10,000 for the homelessness charity Shelter. In 2009, he was awarded a TED Fellowship followed by a TED Senior Fellowship in 2010. He ran the New York Marathon again in 2011.

Taghi lives in London and recently had his bicycle stolen.