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, USA) where her projects were selected to represent the university in submissions for the Student Academy Awards, Emmy® and DGA Student Awards. She is a Muskie Program alumna.

           Her feature film project, Music Within Me, was selected for the upcoming TorinoFilmLab Next Feature Film 2026. 
            Her short film The Window (2024) premiered at the LA Femme IFF (USA), and won Best Female Director at the City of Angels FF, (USA) and Best Short Film at the Golden Nugget IFF (UK), along with awards for Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound Design at the Sipontum Arthouse IFF (IT).

           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.

           Nabat is drawn to stories of women at the edge of inner rupture—when the life assigned to them and who they truly are can no longer occupy the same body. Her work blends intimacy, tension, and sensory detail, using sound and physical space to reveal what happens when silence becomes unbearable.

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