Nabat Shir is a Fulbright Scholar, Southeast Student Emmy Award-winning director, writer, and producer from Turkmenistan — the first female filmmaker from her country to emerge on the international stage with her film debuting in Hollywood. She holds an MFA in Film & Television from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and is an alumna of the Muskie Program.

          Her short film The Window (2024) premiered at the LA Femme International Film Festival and the City of Angels Film Festival, where she received Best Female Director. It was selected by SCAD to represent the university in submissions to the Student Academy Awards, Emmys, and DGA Student Awards. Her commercial work includes Mimi Meets Mio (Kraft Heinz), which earned a Southeast Student Emmy® Award and a Bronze Pencil at the One Club for Creativity.

          Shir is drawn to stories of women at the edge of inner rupture — the moment when the life assigned to them and the life inside them can no longer occupy the same body. Her work blends intimacy, tension, and sensory detail, using sound, rhythm, and physical space to capture what happens when a woman begins breaking out of the role written for her.

          She is currently developing her debut feature Music Within Me, selected for the upcoming TorinoFilmLab Next 2026 programme.

          Committed to supporting female-driven storytelling, she founded Women in Film: Directing Fundamentals — Turkmenistan’s first hands-on training program for emerging women filmmakers.