Netflix’s short documentary The Elephant Whisperers, has won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short category at the 95th Academy Awards. This Netflix’s short documentary of Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga’s was competing against Haulout, How Do You Measure a Year?, The Martha Mitchell Effect and Stranger At The Gate. 

After winning the Oscar Award, director Gonsalves, praised ‘the motherland India’ and shared an Instagram post writing “Tonight is historic as this is the first ever Oscar for an Indian production…” 

The 41-minute film, which was produced by Achin Jain and Guneet Monga and was directed by Kartiki Gonsalves, centres on a Tamil Nadu family who adopts two orphan young elephants from the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. This India-themed short was noteworthy since it served as director Gonsalves' directing debut. 

“I followed Raghu’s story for five years, and had about 450 hours of footage. There are thousands of Raghu baths in there, so many hours of him eating food or playing. But you need to be patient (with something like this), and you get scenes like the one where Bellie tells Ammu to sit down next to her. These are intimate moments, which cannot be planned.”