Tina Gharavi

Tina Gharavi
تینا غروی
Gharavi on the set of The Tunnel
Born	(1972-07-01) 1 July 1972 Tehran, Imperial State of Iran
Occupation(s)	Artist, director, screenwriter, professor
Years active	1998–present
Website	Official website

Tina Gharavi (Persian: تینا غروی born 1 July 1972) is an Iranian-born British BAFTA and Sundance nominated artist, director and screenwriter.

Early life and education

Born in Tehran, around the time of Islamic Revolution she moved to the United Kingdom, then New Zealand, and finally New Jersey, United States. Gharavi attended high school in suburban New Jersey, spending part of her life in Red Bank, close to the Jersey Shore. Gharavi initially trained as a painter at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She later attended Le Fresnoy studio National des arts contemporains, near Lille, France. She currently splits her time between Newcastle, England, Paris, and Venice Beach, California.

Career

Gharavi is known for her innovative cross-platform stories about rebels, misfits and outsiders as well as people in extraordinary situations. According to The Spectator, Gharavi's work is simultaneously intimate and lyrical, as well as poignant and political.

Her debut, I Am Nasrine, was nominated for a BAFTA. Sir Ben Kingsley called it "an important and much-needed film" and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film four stars, writing that it was "a valuable debut, shot with a fluent kind of poetry". Gharavi has TV credits to her name, including directing on The Tunnel, the UK equivalent of The Bridge for Sky and Ackley Bridge for Channel 4. She is a showrunner for an Icelandic/British Detective series, Refurinn (The Fox), an adaptation of an Icelandic best-selling detective series by Sólveig Pálsdóttir.

Gharavi's award-winning work has been broadcast worldwide on the BBC, Channel 4 (UK), ITV, Showtime, Educational Broadcasting System South Korea, and in the contemporary art world, including multiple screenings at the ICA in London, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (UK). Her films are housed in the permanent collections of MIT, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, British Film Institute, Harvard University Library, Tyne & Wear Archives, Manchester Art Gallery and the Donnell Library in New York, amongst others.

She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, received a UK Arts Council Decibel Spotlight Award and served as a diversity champion for a variety of organizations (UK Refugee Council, Arts Council North-East, Tyneside Cinema and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts). Gharavi is an associate professor in Film & Digital Media at the University of Newcastle. She was invited to join the BAFTA Academy in 2017 and received a Fellowship from the MIT Documentary Lab in Boston.

Production

Gharavi established the film company, Bridge Tunnel Productions, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England in 1998. In 2000, Gharavi set up the Kooch Cinema Group, a media training project, for asylum seekers and refugee participants; the project started after returning to Iran to make a Channel Four commissioned documentary, Mother/Country, where she revisited her mother's house after 23 years. In 2005, she established a separate media charity, Bridge Tunnel Voices, to undertake the charitable and educational work she initiated, mainly working with refugees and asylum seekers; stepping down as the lead creative director in 2015. This led to the development of the feature film, I Am Nasrine, which received a BAFTA nomination in 2013. In 2014, she co-established Bridge Tunnel France in Paris with James Richard Baillie to specialize in European co-productions. In 2019, she set up Which Witch, a new banner to undertake long-form TV drama, launching their first production, Refurinn, aka The Fox, set in the UK and Iceland.

Selected filmography

Year	Film / TV	Notes
2024	Refurinn/The Fox (Nomadic Pictures/Polarama/Bridge Tunnel/Which Witch)	High End Episodic TV - Director/Showrunner. Icelandic-British detective series based on the books of Sólveig Pálsdóttir. Optioned by Nomadic Pictures who produced Fargo.
2024	The Good Iranian	Feature Film - Director/Producer/Screenwriter Currently in development with Film4 and the British Film Institute and with finance/production partners Back-Up (France). Website: The Good Iranian
2023	A Beirut Love Story	Feature Film - Director/Screenwriter In post-production with Millenium Films (US) and Nuboyana Studios
2023	African Queens: Queen Cleopatra	High End Episodic TV [4x40'] - Director Netflix series - Nutopia/Westbrook fiction drama series about the often misunderstood, largely unknown life of the last Pharaoh. Executive produced by Westbrook's Jada Pinkett-Smith
2020	Tribalism Is Killing Us	Feature Documentary Film - Director/Producer Website: Tribalism is Killing Us.
2018	Ackley Bridge (Channel Four TV/The Forge)	High End Episodic TV- Episodes 5 & 6 - Director Website: Channel Four's Ackley Bridge, Series 2.
2017	The Tunnel: Vengeance (Sky TV / Kudos)	High End Episodic TV - Second Unit Director Website: Sky TV's The Tunnel, Series 3.
2015	People Like Us	Short Documentary Film - Director/Producer/Screenwriter Film exploring wrongful conviction and prison exoneration. Made for and with charity Resurrection After Exoneration (New Orleans, LA) Winner: Anthem Film Award: Excellence in Filmmaking (2016) Nominated: AHRC Research in Film Award (2016)
2013	I Am Nasrine	Feature Film - Director/Producer/Screenwriter Awards/Honours : Nominated for a BAFTA in 2013: Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer.[17] Winner (Best Screenplay): Brooklyn Film Festival, 2012.[18] Theatrical release in Spring 2013 Website: iamnasrine.com Main article: I Am Nasrine I Am Nasrine is a feature screenplay, about teenage Iranian refugees in the North East, developed through improvisation with the Kooch Cinema Group and more recently developed with young people as part of the Wiki: Wonderland project. It went into production in June 2009 and was supported by patron Sir Ben Kingsley. The film had a theatrical release in 2013 in Europe. It was screened in the Houses of Parliament in London to a selection of invited MPs. It was also nominated for a BAFTA in 2013.
2008	The King of South Shields	Documentary - Director/Producer Awards/Honours : Nominated - Opening film Sheffield Documentary Film Festival A documentary looking at the day that Muhammad Ali came to Tyneside in 1977. Ali and his new wife Veronica, attended the South Shields Mosque with their baby daughter Hana and had their wedding blessed by the local Imam. Using archive news and Super-8 footage, the film looks at the effect that the event had on the young Yemeni-British men who attended the blessing. The Yemeni community in South Shields is one of the oldest Muslim communities in the UK, and this film examines the emerging Arab/British identity, during a period when the young men involved were recognizing the duality of their culture. The opening film of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival in 2008. Website: thekingofsouthshields.co.uk Archived 7 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
2007–2013	Last of the Dictionary Men	Installation & Touring Exhibition - Filmmaker/Artist International touring exhibition, opened at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in 2008, traveled to Yemen for 2 years including Aden, San'aa, Ta'izz, and returned to London Mosaic Rooms (2013) and the University of Exeter (2016). An exhibition (documentary, oral history and community photographic project) about multi-culturalism and the Yemeni-Muslim community (who have lived in the North East since 1890), Last of the Dictionary Men. This was a major touring exhibition that launched at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in 2008 and subsequently traveled internationally, including to Yemen.
2007	Perfect to Begin	Short Fiction- Script Editor/Producer Awards/Honours : Winner: TCM Classic Shorts Competition
2007	Two Lighthouses	Poetry Film & Documentary- Director/ Producer
2007	Asylum Carwash	Documentary Installation- Director/Producer Commissioned - Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens Asylum Carwash, is an eight-hour installation documentary film project about the existence of modern-day slavery and the reality of black market economics for failed asylum seekers in Europe. Touring the UK in 2007–8, the project was launched by acclaimed Malawian poet and former political prisoner, Jack Mapanje, and was commemorated in a poem entitled Upon Opening Tina's Asylum Carwash.
2006	Bread: Nearest Neighbor: Israel & Palestine	Documentary Installation- Director/Producer Opened - Shanghai Zendai Museum of Contemporary Art, China
2004	Featherhead	Short Fiction- Director/Producer Distributed - Alzheimer's Society Filmed by Cinematographer Brian Tufano
2002	A Town Like Lackawanna	Documentary- Director/Producer/Camera Broadcast - Buffalo Public Broadcast Channel An observational documentary focusing on the attitudes of two distinct groups of men - American Muslims from the Yemeni community and those from white European backgrounds - who once worked in the former steel mining industry in Lackawanna, NY. The film records these two groups of men talking about the changes in their communities and the shift in attitudes since 9/11 following the arrest and trial of the Lackawanna 6. It was commissioned as part of a residency sponsored by the NEA.
2002	Mother/Country	Documentary- Director/Producer Broadcast - Channel Four TV, UK & Sundance Channel/Showtime, USA Awards/Honours : Grand Prize: Tongues on Fire, Asian Women's' Film Festival, ICA London March 2005.[15] At the age of six, director Tina Gharavi left Iran and her mother, to live with her father in the West. She has not seen her mother or homeland since. This film follows her as she returns to Iran to confront her past and understand why her mother sent her away. As well as filming her own experiences, Gharavi employs actors to play out the roles of her and her mother as they look on, in order to facilitate communication between the pair. Time Out selected Mother/Country as Pick of the Week, and called it "genuinely moving".
2001	Closer	Documentary- Director/Producer Broadcast - Sundance Channel/Showtime, USA, EBS, South Korea Awards/Honours : Official selection, Sundance Film Festival.[13] Grand Prize: i/Film Planetout Short Movie Award, OutFEST, Los Angeles.[14] This documentary is a character study of a 17-year-old lesbian living in Newcastle. Closer explores the process of documentary filmmaking and challenges traditional forms of storytelling. combining both fiction and documentary. It was produced without a script and in close collaboration with the subject, Annelise Rodger. It was also selected for Sundance Film Festival, and the winner of the Plantout/iFilm Grand Prize.

External links

• Tina Gharavi at IMDb