Tina Gharavi and Tala Calil brought Shadows of Beirut, their drama of a woman returning to her dying father after 25 years, to Regent Street for its UK premiere.
Tina Gharavi brought Shadows of Beirut to its UK premiere at the Regent Street Cinema in Marylebone on Wednesday 16 September 2026. Tala Calil, who wrote the film with her, plays its lead.
Gharavi was born in Tehran in 1972, trained as a painter in the United States and studied at Le Fresnoy in France. Her first film, Closer, premiered at Sundance in 2001, and her debut feature, I Am Nasrine, was nominated for a BAFTA. She has since directed Queen Cleopatra for Netflix and an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day.
Her character returns to Beirut after 25 years to see the father she has not met since childhood, and the film takes in obsessive-compulsive disorder and inherited trauma.
The production filmed across Bulgaria and Lebanon through the pandemic and the aftermath of the 2020 port explosion.
Gharavi, Calil and the actor Assaad Bouab attended the premiere at a cinema that opened in 1848 and showed the first moving pictures seen in Britain. BUFF Studios released the film in British cinemas nine days later.
Bouab, born in Aurillac in 1980, is known for Call My Agent!, The Pursuit of Love and Bad Sisters.