Animator Nina Sabnani to Receive IDSFFK Lifetime Achievement Award

Animation filmmaker Nina Sabnani has been named the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 18th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), recognising her contributions to documentary and short filmmaking. The honour carries a cash prize of ₹2 lakh, a sculpture and a citation.

The award will be presented by Chief Minister V. D. Satheesan at the festival's closing ceremony, scheduled for September 30 at Kairali Theatre in Thiruvananthapuram. The festival itself runs from September 25 to 30 across the Kairali, Sree and Nila theatres in the capital, and will feature screenings of ten films by Ms. Sabnani.

An animator, illustrator, researcher and educator, Ms. Sabnani won the National Film Award for Best Animation Film in 2016 for Hum Chitra Banate Hain, a work created in collaboration with Sher Singh, a traditional Bhil artist from Madhya Pradesh. Her practice brings together art, storytelling, ethnography and oral traditions, and her collaborative projects with artists and folk storytellers have earned national and international recognition.

Her filmography also includes Mukand and Riaz, Tanko Bole Chhe (The Stitches Speak) and Baat Wahi Hai. Among her other honours are the Big Little Book Award for Illustration from Tata Trusts (2018), the Legend of Indian Animation Award from Toonz Media Group (2021) and the Ram Mohan Award of Excellence in Animation (2024). A collaborative project with artist Shrilekha Sikander, Fleeting Moments, was exhibited at COP27 in Egypt in 2022.

Ms. Sabnani co-founded the Animation Design Programme at the National Institute of Design, where she taught for two decades between 1985 and 2006, and later taught at the IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay. She has served on juries at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival (2024), SIGGRAPH Asia (2023) and Indie-AniFest Seoul (2017). She is currently associated with the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru, and UPES, Dehradun, and is Festival Director of the AniMela International Animation Festival.

Past recipients of the IDSFFK Lifetime Achievement Award include Anand Patwardhan (2018), Madhushree Dutta (2019), Ranjan Palit (2021), Reena Mohan (2022), Deepa Dhanraj (2023), Naresh Bedi and Rajesh Bedi (2024) and Rakesh Sharma (2025).