Tina Gharavi is a BAFTA and Sundance nominated Artist, Director and Screenwriter, born in Tehran, who lives in the UK and Los Angeles. She is a global citizen; raised in the UK, New Zealand, New Jersey and studied filmmaking in France at Le Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains. Gharavi is known for innovative cross-platform stories about outsiders, misfits and rebels as well as people in extraordinary situations. Gharavi's work is simultaneously intimate and lyrical, as well as poignant and political. Her work often explores how we tell the stories of 'the other.' Her debut feature, 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 4 stars. 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 Four TV. She's showrunner for an Icelandic/British Detective series, Refurrin, Exec-ed by Hilary Bevan Jones and produced by Nicky Bentham. Gharavi's award-winning work has been broadcast worldwide on the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Showtime, Educational Broadcasting SystemSouth Korea, and in the contemporary art world, including multiple screenings at the ICA in London, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. 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 NY 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 organisations. 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; a 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. In 2014, she co-established Bridge + Tunnel France in Paris, with James Richard Baillie, to specialise in European co-productions.
