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Kaveh Nabatian

Kaveh Nabatian

Directing

Biography

Kaveh Nabatian is an Iranian-Canadian musician and film director, known as a trumpeter and keyboardist with the Juno Award winning orchestral post-rock band Bell Orchestre.

Known For

Without Havana
N/A

Leonardo, a ballet dancer, and Sara, an ambitious lawyer, are young black Cubans desperate to leave their country. They realize that their ticket off the island is for Leonardo to seduce one of the foreign students at the salsa school where he teaches. Dreams collide when they meet a lonely Iranian-Canadian woman who is seeking adventure and passion in paradise.

Without Havana

2021
Sunday Afternoon
N/A

It is a Sunday afternoon in the universe. When a mysterious musical force causes scorching heat, tornadoes, and raging fires to devastate our planet, four very different people await the impending disaster at a local corner store. A film about the human ties that bind us when catastrophe is imminent.

Sunday Afternoon

2008
The Seven Last Words
N/A

The Seven Last Words sounds out the experiential states and rituals particular to humanity, based on seven themes expressed in an oratorio: forgiveness, hope, relation, abandonment, distress, triumph, and life after the death.

The Seven Last Words

2019
Dive
N/A

Dive is an urban fairy tale about a self-destructive man who can't feel anything. From the moment he sets eyes on a mysterious young woman, something inside him stirs. Unbeknownst to him, she is part of the White Eye community, a marginalized group of hyper-sensitive beings inhabiting the same world as humans. When her true identity is revealed, his destructive nature reaches its peak as he contemplates a drastic escape from his melancholy.

Dive

2013
Montreal, White City
6.0

It’s Christmas Eve, but the Algerian taxi driver living in Canada is more caught up in Ramadan. By chance he picks up a compatriot, a former pop star thought dead, and the evening gets more interesting.

Montreal, White City

2016
Prison of the Sun
N/A

No description available.

Prison of the Sun

2022
Steam
4.3

Set in Mexico City over the course of a single day, this film is based on the true story of an older man's decision to accept his homosexuality. Told without any dialogue, Vapor is a cinematic exploration of shame, catharsis, and ultimately, transcendence.

Steam

2010
St. Henri, the 26th of August
N/A

On August 26th, 2010, fourteen filmmakers followed multiple stories in the Montreal neighbourhood of St-Henri. The result is a touching, funny and fascinating day-in-the-life of this eclectic community.

St. Henri, the 26th of August

2011
Nan Lakou Kanaval
N/A

A 16mm visual and auditory exploration of the Haitian carnival. A hallucinatory and unparalleled carnival. Made in collaboration with students from the Cinema Institute in Jacmel, Haiti, and based on a poem by the young Haitian poet Gabriel Wood Jerry.

Nan Lakou Kanaval

2014
Kite Zo A: Leave the Bones
N/A

In 1791, in Haiti, Dutty Boukman presided over a Vodou ritual in Bois-Caïman that led to the creation of the first Black republic. Since then, rituals of transformation and artistic expression have been at the core of a thriving culture as the country faces oppression, poverty, and natural disasters. "Kite Zo A” (Leave the Bones) is a sensorial film about rituals in Haiti, from ancient to modern, made in collaboration with poets, dancers, musicians, fishermen, daredevil rollerbladers, and Vodou priests, set to poetry by Haitian author Wood-Jerry Gabriel.

Kite Zo A: Leave the Bones

2022
Southern Star
N/A

A short film featuring Leif Vollebekk and AURORA.

Southern Star

2025
No image
7.0

Residents struggle to pay their rapidly rising rents on Wellington Street in Montreal.

645 Wellington

2002
Love
5.8

New Years' Eve. Boy meets girl. Boy doesn't have condom. A film about unprotected sex, destiny, and soul music.

Love

2011
Accelere Chapultepec
N/A

A hypnagogic 16mm dance hallucination that stars the enthusiastic traffic cops of Mexico City. Set to music by the filmmaker’s band Bell Orchestre.

Accelere Chapultepec

2017
Forward Back
N/A

With movement inspired by Merce Cunningham's iconic piece "50 Looks," a group of dancers move together through a vast landscape seemingly plucked from an alternate future. Just as changing light infiltrates the choreography, so do 35mm negative manipulations, compelling the dancers to engage with forces beyond time.

Forward Back

2024
No image
N/A

Jose Garcia was a doctor in his home country. Now as a taxi driver in Canada, he must cope with a playfully taunting prospective employer who takes a seat in his cab.

Taxi Libre

Holika
N/A

On one day during Holi celebrations every year, veiled women in the northern Indian towns of Nandgaon and Barsana strike men with large staffs, re-enacting an ancient Hindu legend. A psychedelic 16mm journey into light, color, and violence. A hallucinatory journey through the eruption of color, violence, sound and joy, that heralds the beginning of spring in Uttar Pradesh.

Holika

2015
No image
N/A

Featuring the music of Socalled, Theodore Bikel and Sans Pression, this whimsical and bittersweet short mixes a traditional Yiddish ballad with rap and puppetry.

(Rock the) Belz

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