As his graduation film Ahmed made
Tanju Miah, a
National Lottery-funded
short which won Best Factual Film at the
Royal Television Society Student Television Awards 2007, Best Cinematography at the Kodak Student Commercial Awards 2006. as well as being runner-up in the best newcomer category at the
Grierson Awards 2006,
TCM classic shorts,
Satyajit Ray award, amongst others. The film appeared at the
Sundance Film Festival and
Toronto International Film Festival. In 2007, Ahmed later directed a western called
The Last Thakur. It was a
Channel 4 co-production with
Artificial Eye as the distributor. The film was received well by critics and
Sight & Sound magazine named
The Last Thakur "one of the most confident British debut features since
Asif Kapadia's
The Warrior (2001)… with which it shares an Asian location and language and a welcome belief in the primacy of visual storytelling." The film premiered at the
London Film Festival and was shown at the
Dubai International Film Festival,
Mumbai International Film Festival,
New York Film Festival, and others and finally had its theatrical release in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2009. ==Filmography==