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Tina Gharavi (Persian: تینا غروی born 1 July 1972) is an Iranian-born British artist, director and screenwriter based in Paris. Her 2013 debut feature I Am Nasrine was nominated for a BAFTA award.[1]
Tina Gharavi | |
|---|---|
تینا غروی | |
 Gharavi on the set of TV series The Tunnel | |
| Born | 1 July 1972 |
| Occupations | Artist, director, screenwriter, professor |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Website | Official website |
Early life and education
editGharavi was born in Tehran, Iran. She attended high school in Middletown, New Jersey. She initially trained as a painter in the United States before an on-set experience for a Hollywood production prompted her to pursue a career in the film industry.[2][3] She later studied near Lille in northern France at Le Fresnoy, studio national des arts contemporains.[4]
Career
editHer directorial debut, Closer, is a 35mm experimental documentary which premiered at Sundance 2001 won the PlantOut Grand Prize at Outfest in LA.[5] Her following documentary, Mother/Country, which chronicled her return to her mother’s house in Iran 23 years after the Islamic Revolution, was broadcast in the UK on Channel Four TV.[6] In 2010, she was chosen as one of nine emerging directors to be mentored as part of the UK Film Council's Guiding Lights scheme.[7]
In 2011, Gharavi directed two episodes of The Tunnel, the British adaptation of The Bridge for Sky, as well as two episodes of Ackley Bridge for Channel 4. Her debut feature film, I Am Nasrine, was released in 2013. It was nominated for a BAFTA for outstanding debut.[8] Sir Ben Kingsley, a patron of the film,[9][10] called it "an important and much-needed film".[11] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film four stars, writing that it was "a valuable debut, shot with a fluent kind of poetry".[8]
In April 2023, Gharavi addressed criticism regarding the casting of mix-race actress Adele James as Cleopatra in the Netflix series Queen Cleopatra,[12] which she directed, distributed by Netflix and produced by Jada Pinkettt Smith's Westbrook Studios.[13] In 2024, Gharavi was announced as the director of The Shah, the Spy and the Madman, a documentary series on the 1953 coup d'état in Iran.[14] In December of that year, Gharavi was announced as the showrunner for The Fox, an international crime thriller series based on the bestselling Icelandic detective novels by Sólveig Pálsdóttir.[15]
Gharavi is a Reader in Film & Digital Media at the University of Newcastle,[16] where she completed her PhD, Narrative Cannibals: Whose Story Is It Anyway? The Politics of Representation and the Veracity of the Image in the Age of Digital Storytelling.[17][18] She was invited to join the BAFTA Academy in 2017 and received a Fellowship from the MIT Documentary Lab in Boston,[19] where she is working on her next feature project, The Good Iranian, in collaboration with Film4.[20]
Production
editIn 1998, Gharavi established the film company Bridge +Tunnel Productions, a multidisciplinary media production company. The company uses cinema and storytelling to highlight underrepresented stories from minority and marginalized communities.[21]
Selected filmography
editFilm
edit| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Closer | Director/Producer | |
| 2002 | A Town Like Lackawanna | Director/Producer/Camera | |
| 2004 | Featherhead | Director/Producer | Short film |
| 2006 | Bread: Nearest Neighbor: Israel & Palestine | Director/Producer | Documentary installation |
| 2007 | Asylum Carwash | Director/Producer | Documentary installation |
| 2007 | Two Lighthouses | Director/Producer | |
| 2007–2013 | Last of the Dictionary Men | Artist | Documentary installation |
| 2008 | The King of South Shields | Director/Producer | |
| 2013 | I Am Nasrine | Director/Producer/Screenwriter | |
| 2015 | People Like Us | Director/Producer/Screenwriter | Documentary short |
| 2020 | Tribalism Is Killing Us | Director/Producer | |
| 2023 | A Beirut Love Story | Director/Screenwriter | |
| 2026 | Virginia Woolf's Night and Day | Director | |
| TBA | Forough: Let Us Believe in the Beginning of The Cold Season | Director/Producer/Screenwriter | |
| TBA | The Good Iranian | Director/Producer/Screenwriter |
Television
edit| Year | Title | Role | Notes
- |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Mother/Country [Channel Four TV, UK] | Director/Producer | |
| 2017 | The Tunnel: Vengeance [Sky TV] | Second unit director | |
| 2018 | Ackley Bridge [Channel Four TV, UK] | Director | Episodes 5, 6 |
| 2023 | African Queens: Queen Cleopatra [Netflix] | Director | Episodes 1-4 |
| TBA | Refurinn/The Fox | Showrunner / Director | |
References
edit- ↑ "Bafta nomination for Tina Gharavi's smuggled film". BBC News. 10 January 2013.
- ↑ "#IAFilmmakers Series: Profile of Tina Gharavi – NIAC". Retrieved 2 July 2025.
- ↑ "Tina Gharavi: Q&A". Guru.bafta.org. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
- ↑ "Tina Gharavi – le Fresnoy – Studio national".
- ↑ "Netribution > Features > Interview > Tina Gharavi". www.netribution.co.uk. Retrieved 28 September 2025.
- ↑ "British Council UK Films Database: Mother/Country". filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
- ↑ Thiru, Menaka (6 May 2010). "Skillset launches third Guiding Lights mentoring programme". Screen. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
- 1 2 Bradshaw, Peter (13 June 2013). "I Am Nasrine – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2025.
- ↑ "I AM NASRINE". Brooklyn Film Festival. Retrieved 25 January 2025.
- ↑ "Tina Gharavi". Primetime. Retrieved 25 January 2025.
- ↑ "BEV chats to I Am Nasrine dir. Tina Gharavi | Birds Eye View". birds-eye-view.co.uk. Archived from the original on 15 February 2015.
- ↑ Kasraoui, Safaa (24 April 2023). "Filmmaker Tina Gharavi Responds to Egyptians' Criticism Against 'Black Cleopatra'". Morocco World News.
- ↑ "Newcastle University academic Dr Tina Gharavi directs Queen Cleopatra". Press Office. 9 May 2023. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
- ↑ "Tina Gharavi to Direct Iranian Coup Doc Series 'The Shah, the Spy and the Madman'". Variety. 2 April 2024. Retrieved 7 April 2025.
- ↑ Clarke, Stewart (9 December 2024). "'African Queens: Cleopatra' Director Tina Gharavi Options Icelandic Bestseller & Tees Up International Crime Thriller Series 'The Fox'". Deadline.
- ↑ "Tina Gharavi · BIFA · British Independent Film Awards". BIFA · British Independent Film Awards. 12 October 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
- ↑ "Researching our Futures - Newcastle University". conferences.ncl.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
- ↑ Narrative cannibals : Who speaks for whom? Heritage, documentary practice and the strategies of power. Taylor & Francis. 28 March 2023. doi:10.4324/9781003092735-14. Archived from the original on 9 June 2024.
- ↑ "Staff Profile | English Literature, Language and Linguistics | Newcastle University". Newcastle University.
- ↑ "Tina Gharavi". MIT Open Documentary Lab. 4 September 2011. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
- ↑ sidreddy (4 April 2022). "Meet Tina Gharavi | Film director & screenwriter, occasional professor". SHOUTOUT LA. Retrieved 26 March 2025.
External links
edit- Tina Gharavi at IMDb