Tina Gharavi

Tina Gharavi
تینا غروی
Gharavi on the set of TV series The Tunnel
Born (1972-07-01) 1 July 1972
Tehran, Imperial State of Iran
OccupationsArtist, director, screenwriter, professor
Years active1998–present
WebsiteOfficial website

Tina Gharavi (Persian: تینا غروی born 1 July 1972) is an Iranian-born British film director, screenwriter, artist, and academic based in Paris and Newcastle.

Early life and education

Gharavi 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.[1][2] She later studied near Lille in northern France at Le Fresnoy, studio national des arts contemporains.[3]

Career

In 1998, Gharavi established the film company Bridge +Tunnel Productions, a multidisciplinary media production company. The company has produced projects across documentary, television, and narrative film.[4]

Her 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[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]

In 2026 Gharavi's film adaptation of the 1919 Virginia Woolf novel Night and Day was released, starring Haley Bennett, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, and Jack Whitehall.[16] The Guardian gave it four-stars and praised the adaptation’s imaginative approach, describing it as a “dreamy, proto-feminist tale,”[17] while Little White Lies called it a "muddled adaptation".[18]

Gharavi is a Reader in Film & Digital Media at the University of Newcastle,[19] 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.[20][21] She was invited to join the BAFTA Academy in 2017 and received a Fellowship from the MIT Documentary Lab in Boston,[22] where she is working on her next feature project, The Good Iranian, in collaboration with Film4.[23]

Selected filmography

Film

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

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

  1. ↑ "#IAFilmmakers Series: Profile of Tina Gharavi – NIAC". Retrieved 2 July 2025.
  2. ↑ "Tina Gharavi: Q&A". Guru.bafta.org. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  3. ↑ "Tina Gharavi – le Fresnoy – Studio national".
  4. ↑ sidreddy (4 April 2022). "Meet Tina Gharavi | Film director & screenwriter, occasional professor". SHOUTOUT LA. Retrieved 26 March 2025.
  5. ↑ "Netribution > Features > Interview > Tina Gharavi". www.netribution.co.uk. Retrieved 28 September 2025.
  6. ↑ "British Council UK Films Database: Mother/Country". filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
  7. ↑ Thiru, Menaka (6 May 2010). "Skillset launches third Guiding Lights mentoring programme". Screen. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
  8. 1 2 Bradshaw, Peter (13 June 2013). "I Am Nasrine – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2025.
  9. ↑ "I AM NASRINE". Brooklyn Film Festival. Retrieved 25 January 2025.
  10. ↑ "Tina Gharavi". Primetime. Retrieved 25 January 2025.
  11. ↑ "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.
  12. ↑ Kasraoui, Safaa (24 April 2023). "Filmmaker Tina Gharavi Responds to Egyptians' Criticism Against 'Black Cleopatra'". Morocco World News.
  13. ↑ "Newcastle University academic Dr Tina Gharavi directs Queen Cleopatra". Press Office. 9 May 2023. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
  14. ↑ "Tina Gharavi to Direct Iranian Coup Doc Series 'The Shah, the Spy and the Madman'". Variety. 2 April 2024. Retrieved 7 April 2025.
  15. ↑ Clarke, Stewart (9 December 2024). "'African Queens: Cleopatra' Director Tina Gharavi Options Icelandic Bestseller & Tees Up International Crime Thriller Series 'The Fox'". Deadline.
  16. ↑ "Virginia Woolf's Night and Day". Wikipedia. Retrieved 3 July 2026.
  17. ↑ Bradshaw, Peter (18 June 2026). "Virginia Woolf's Night and Day review – feelgood proto-feminist tale reaches for the stars". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 July 2026.
  18. ↑ Crawford, Lillian (18 June 2026). "Virginia Woolf's Night and Day review – a muddled adaptation". Little White Lies. Retrieved 3 July 2026.
  19. ↑ "Tina Gharavi · BIFA · British Independent Film Awards". BIFA · British Independent Film Awards. 12 October 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
  20. ↑ "Researching our Futures - Newcastle University". conferences.ncl.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
  21. ↑ 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.
  22. ↑ "Staff Profile | English Literature, Language and Linguistics | Newcastle University". Newcastle University.
  23. ↑ "Tina Gharavi". MIT Open Documentary Lab. 4 September 2011. Retrieved 3 July 2025.
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