Award-winning animation filmmaker Shira Avni is an Associate Professor of Film Animation at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where she is the proud recipient of a 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award. Her previous animated documentary films (John and Michael, Tying Your Own Shoes, Petra’s Poem), in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, garnered over 30 international awards, including the prestigious DOK Leipzig Golden Dove and the NHK Japan Prize, and screened in over 120 festivals worldwide.

Avni’s most recent film Two One Two (2023) has won 20 international awards and 15 nominations to date, including the Special Jury Prize at the Sommets du Cinéma d’animation, Best Animated Short Film at the Berlin Short Film Festival, the Nonviolence Award at Ann Arbor, Best Documentary Microshort at Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation and Technology, Best Minidoc at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, and Best International Animation at the AmiCorti International Film Festival, with over 145 film festival screenings worldwide. Her current research weaves documentary, animation, and personal memoir to address neurodiversity, identity, social justice, motherhood, and interdependence through luminous clay-on-glass animation, back-lit to create the shimmering effect of stained glass in motion.