The woman who created History – Kartiki Gonsalves

Kartiki Gonsalves, director of Oscar winning documentary, The Elephant Whisperers made the nation proud with her feat. Kartiki Gonsalves now returns to India, proudly holding the Oscar’s trophy .

The Elephant Whisperers, a Tamil documentary directed by Kartiki Gonsalves, won the Oscar in the Best Documentary Short Film category. It competed with other nominees Haul Out, How Do You Measure A Year, The Martha Mitchell Effect, and Stranger At The Gate and came out as the winner.

The director, Kartiki of the documentary is a filmmaker and photojournalist based out of Mumbai. Her work primarily focuses on the environment, nature, and wildlife. Recently, in an interview with Hindustan Times, the first-time filmmaker said that her team has come a long way since the beginning of 2017 when they began the movie. Talking about the documentary, Kartiki had said that it happened very organically. “It was a correlation of a lot of years of storytelling and photography,” she had said.

The plot of this Oscar winning documentary, produced by Guneet Monga revolves around a family who adopts two orphan baby elephants in Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Talking about the documentary, Kartiki had told HT, “While most films have focused more on humans being cured by a bond with an animal, humans being harmed by wild animals or wild animals suffering from human expansion into their territory, The Elephant Whisperers lets viewers understand both the elephant and the human carers with minimal, outside interpretation. It portrays the dignity of both the magnificent elephants and the indigenous people who have lived with them and cared for them for centuries.”