Oscars 2023: Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga’s ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ Wins The Best Documentary Short Film!

Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga’s Netflix short documentary , The Elephant Whisperers, has won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short category at the 95th Academy Awards. The director went on to thank the Academy, producer Guneet Monga, her family and dedicated the win to her “motherland India”. Produced by Achin Jain and Guneet Monga, and directed by Kartiki Gonsalves, the 41-minute short follows the family from Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve who end up adopting two orphan baby elephants. What was special about this India short was that it happened to be filmmaker Gonsalves’ directorial debut.

Gonsalves said in her acceptance speech, “I stand here today to speak for the sacred bond between us and our natural world, for the respect of indigenous communities, and empathy towards other living beings we share space with and finally, for coexistence,”

Also she added, “Thank you to the Academy for recognising our film, highlighting indigenous people and animals.. To Netflix for believing in the power of this… To Bomman and Belli for sharing their sacred tribal wisdom to Guneet, my producer…” also said “My mentor and my entire team and finally, to my mother, father and sister who are up there somewhere and you are the centre of my universe, to my motherland India.”