NEW YORK (AP) – To New Yorkers, they are as common a presence as honking horns and sidewalk-crowding tourists.

Pushcart vendors dot the city, peddling coffee, doughnuts, hot dogs, shish kebabs and more to the hurrying masses. They forge relationships with regular customers, even if they don’t know each others’ names.

In the movie “Man Push Cart,” writer and director Ramin Bahrani tries to raise awareness of these men – and they are mostly men – through the fictional tale of one.

The movie, which opened here Friday, follows a young man named Ahmad, who left life as a rock star – the Bono of Pakistan! – to follow the woman he loves to America. But, now, Ahmad’s wife has died and his in-laws have largely taken possession of the couple’s son, leaving Ahmad to fend – and vend – alone.

Bahrani, a soft-spoken, intense Columbia University graduate who developed the film over three years, says there’s no way he can succinctly distill the message of the movie, but that the idea of all the Ahmads out there intrigued him.

“One of the things I was interested in in his character is the fact that these kinds of people serve us everywhere in the world, but we don’t really pay much attention to them in our lives or in our cinema,” Bahrani said.

Though not a documentary, “Man Push Cart” often feels like one.

The movie’s pace is set by Ahmad’s daily routine. Over and over he hauls his cart to work while on foot in the dead of night. Many of the camera shots focus on Ahmad’s hands as he doles out coffee and bagels – and bootleg porn on the side. Bahrani has cited “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus’ essay about the Greek legend of a man condemned to rolling a boulder up a mountain, only for it to escape back down each time, as one of his inspirations.

At times, the most striking character in the movie is New York. As in “Taxi Driver,” which Bahrani credits as an influence, the city is an active backdrop – as central a character as any of the actors in “Man Push Cart.” It imposes anonymity through its size, brashness through its noise and bewilderment through its diversity.

Bahrani, who was born and raised in North Carolina, is part of a wave of directors of Iranian descent who have captured accolades in recent years. “Man Push Cart” has been cited at international film festivals and garnered praise from many film critics.

Although Bahrani spent three years in Iran and follows the work of famed Iranian directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, he declines to define his career or limit his stories by always focusing on his ethnicity.

“I have no agenda to promote Iranian culture nor do I have an agenda not to promote it,” said Bahrani, 31.

His film is carried – pushed? – by the lead actor, Ahmad Razvi, a New Yorker of Pakistani descent whose many jobs over the years have included pushcart vending. Bahrani offered him the role after getting to know him by visiting a restaurant he owned. Razvi won a best-actor award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece for his role in “Man Push Cart.”

The toil of immigrants is a subject close to Razvi’s heart. He’s long been active in New York’s Pakistani community and helped found the Council of Peoples Organization, a social-service agency that helps South Asians and others in need.

“A lot of these taxi drivers or these people doing odd jobs, they come from another world where they’re doctors, they’re professors, they’re engineers, where over here it’s not accredited, it’s not recognized,” said Razvi, 33, who came to the U.S. as a 6-year-old. “This guy had everything in his life. He was rich and famous. He was a rock ‘n roll star. But he chose to leave all that because he was in love.”

Though set in a post-Sept. 11 world, the movie doesn’t hammer that point, preferring more subtle references, such as the reactions to Ahmad as he carries a gas tank at one point in the film. The chief struggle for Ahmad is seizing opportunities – a new job, the possibility of love, a potential road back to musical fame – that are offered to him.

Razvi said the filming was physically exhausting, especially pulling the cart. (Asked if the movie should have been called “Man Pull Cart,” Bahrani simply replied, “That doesn’t sound good.”)

In one scene, Razvi tumbles while hauling the heavy contraption, an unscripted moment that delighted Bahrani. Razvi was happy about the shot, but didn’t want to talk to Bahrani for about three days after that.

Much of the film takes place in the dark or under an overcast sky and the main character is in constant melancholy. Even his attempt to take care of a kitten, a thread pulled from Razvi’s actual experience, is tinged with doom.

But Bahrani dismisses the notion that the movie can’t uplift.

“I don’t want to be a downer, but I’m sorry, there is not going to be world peace, and there is not going to be the end of poverty and hunger,” Bahrani said. “I don’t care what anyone tells me. I think depressing is to live with these false hopes because they don’t exist. What is not depressing for me is to accept reality the way it exists.”

Not that he’s trying to impose a single point of view on the audience.

“For every person that likes my film I hope there’s someone who hates it,” he said. “Then they can argue about it.”