Bassam Tariq

The Sundance Institute awarded Tariq and Mullick the Art of Nonfiction fellowship January 2016. The Art of Nonfiction initiative expands the institute's support for documentaries that explore contemporary social issues.

In 2014, Tariq co-founded a halal butcher shop in the East Village in New York with Khalid Latif and Russell Khan. The shop, Honest Chops, was initially started because of the founders' frustration with the lack of halal meat options in New York City. The butcher shop sources organic, humanely-raised animals from the Tri-State area and attempts to make the product accessible and affordable. A portion of the profits goes toward building social services and institutions in New York City. The shop also distributes meat to soup kitchens, food pantries and families in need around major holidays.

Tariq is also a TED Fellow. In October 2014, he hosted a TED Talk titled "The beauty and diversity of Muslim life." The talk explores how his eclectic career reflects his perspective on what it means to be Muslim, and he relates his disparate professions as a response to the complicated history that America has with diversity and people who oversimplify Muslim beliefs and communities.

In 2013, Tariq co-directed These Birds Walk with Omar Mullick. The film is his first feature-length documentary and follows street children in Pakistan.

The Sundance-funded These Birds Walk premiered at South by Southwest 2013 and opened in theaters across the US in November 2013. The film explores the struggles of street children in Karachi, Pakistan who are living the Edhi Foundation, a non-profit social welfare program, and the sympathetic but reluctant ambulance driver who has to take them back to the homes they've run away from.

In 2009, Tariq and his friend Aman Ali started a blogging project called 30 Mosques in 30 Days. During Ramadan, Tariq and Ali broke their fast at different mosques around New York each night of Ramadan. They shared their stories on a Tumblr blog.

Tariq was the first person in his family to attend college, and he received a Bachelor of Science (BS) in advertising from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. While in college, Tariq took a class called “Creativity in American Culture” that inspired him to start making films, which at first were corporate videos. He free-lanced and filmed promotional videos for Celestica, The University of Texas at Austin, and CBS News 11.

Bassam Tariq (born October 22, 1986) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter born in Karachi, Pakistan. He co-directed and produced the Sundance-funded documentary These Birds Walk (2013) with Omar Mullick, and he was named in Filmmaker' s "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2012.

When Tariq moved back to New York, he read about a humanitarian in Pakistan named Abdul Sattar Edhi, who started the first ambulance system in Pakistan in the 1950s and founded the Edhi Foundation. Tariq and Mullick wanted to make a film about him, but Edhi urged them to focus on the work his foundation does. As a result, the film follows a young runaway boy, Omar, who lives in a home for runaways that Edhi runs.