Nabat Shir is a Fulbright Scholar, Student Emmy Award-winning director, screenwriter, and producer from Turkmenistan — the first female filmmaker from her country to emerge on the international stage with a film premiere in Hollywood. Shir is the only filmmaker from Turkmenistan to be awarded a Fulbright Grant — a prestigious U.S. scholarship, awarded for academic merit, professional potential, and leadership. She holds an MFA in Film & Television from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and is an alumna of the Edmund S. Muskie Fellowship. 

          Her short film The Window (2024) premiered at Hollywood festivals (LA Femme IFF, City of Angels FF), winning Best Female Director and multiple European awards including Best Short Film. It was selected by SCAD to represent the university in submissions to the Student Academy Awards, Emmys, and DGA Student Awards. The same year, she directed Mimi Meets Mio, a Kraft Heinz commercial that won a Southeast Student Emmy® Award and a Bronze Pencil at the One Club for Creativity’s Young Ones Awards in New York, alongside other U.S.-broadcast commercials. She also interned on Talia Lugacy’s feature Dark Days and the Dawn (USA, 2023).

          Shir’s films explore the lives of women on the verge of transformation — stories of sacrifice, awakening, and profound change. She strives to create films that transcend mere entertainment, using cinema as a space to expand consciousness — daring to ask existential and social questions while remaining visually and emotionally captivating, and experimenting with image, sound, and performance. Committed to amplifying female-driven storytelling, she founded Women in Film: Directing Fundamentals — Turkmenistan’s first hands-on training program for emerging women filmmakers. The initiative empowered the country’s first generation of female directors and advanced gender equality in cinema.

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