For two decades, award-winning director Kaveh Nabatian has been wowing audiences with his films, including the Genie- and Prix Jutra-nominated Vapor. His debut feature, Sin La Habana, won multiple awards on the international film festival circuit and was released commercially in 2021.
But Nabatian may be better known as the trumpet and gongoma player of the Juno Award-winning Bell Orchestre. The collaborative instrumental group played their House Music album with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) at a sold-out concert at the Maison symphonique in November 2021.
Music and film often merge in Nabatian’s multidisciplinary artistic world. Past collaborations include projects with Arcade Fire, The Barr Brothers and Half Moon Run. His acclaimed 2017 feature documentary about Leonard Cohen, A Crack in Everything, was commissioned by the CBC and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
Proudest moment
“Playing with the OSM. For a guy who studied trumpet on impulse after doing film school, being up there with that calibre of musicians was just so incredible. I'm very proud of the hard work that got me there. It was a really beautiful experience.”
Influential professor
“John Locke [film studies] helped me define the way I see film. Rather than spending energy interpreting a challenging film, just carefully watch what's actually happening in a scene. When you're not trying to find a hidden meaning, it opens up the magic of what the filmmakers are doing in a way that is really quite different.”
Career challenge
“This job is very unstable. You get tons of praise, then tons of rejection. That can be a challenge because when you're doing well, you start to believe you’re amazing. When it gets really hard and you're doing badly, you start to believe that you suck. It's difficult to be creative from that space. You really have to learn how to separate your ego from the whole thing and figure out why you're in it.”
Passion project
“I taught filmmaking at the Cine Institute in Haiti for a while, and I've gone back a lot since then to develop projects with former students now making their own films.”