Taghvai’s cinematography favored natural light, still frames, and silence. In his films, silence is not emptiness; it is a form of speech. His characters rarely explain themselves — instead, their gestures, pauses, and gazes convey what words cannot. In Unruled Paper (Kaghaz-e Bi Khat) (2002), for example, the psychological distance between husband and wife is rendered not through argument, but through spatial composition — the space between them at the dinner table, the echo of a quiet room.
He once described silence as “the most honest sound in cinema,” a statement that encapsulates his belief that true emotion often exists beneath dialogue, not within it. Taghvai was married to the acclaimed Iranian actress Hengameh Ghaziani, who appeared in some of his later works. The two shared a deep artistic partnership based on mutual respect for artistic integrity and realism.
