Arts
IFTA win for Lankan-Irish Shauna
View(s):By Namali Premawardhana
“Dembaya,” an Irish short animated film produced by Sri Lankan-Irish Shauna Cullen won Best Short Film (Animation) at the IFTA (Irish Film and Television Academy) Awards in February 2025.
“It has been such an amazing experience!” Shauna wrote in an email to the Sunday Times. “The room was bursting with the biggest names in film and TV and we were beyond proud and excited to be in the room with them.”
At IFTA awards: Producer Shauna Cullen with director Borja Guillot with the award for best short film (animation). Pic courtesy IFTA, by Barry McCall
While she is clear that the award itself is not the measure of her work, Shauna is grateful for the “magic” it has the potential to bring, in the form of open doors for her future projects. “Perhaps there is an opportunity where I can produce a short with a Sri Lankan narrative,” she wrote, “now there’s an idea!”
Sri Lanka evidently holds a special place in the producer’s heart. Shauna spent her early childhood in Dublin, Ireland, before her family moved back to her mother’s and her paternal grandfather’s childhood home, Colombo, when she was six years old. They made a home in Rajagiriya and Shauna and two of her seven siblings received five years of primary education at The Overseas School of Colombo.
“Even before we moved to Sri Lanka my mother always spoke about it and our heritage,” Shauna said. “She was very determined that we not only knew but were also proud of our Irish and Sri Lankan roots.”
The plan worked so well that when Shauna was married in Limerick in 2019, she had Kandyan dancers go down the aisle before the ceremony. “It was amazing!” she wrote. “I try to celebrate my roots where and when I can!”
While Shauna moved back to Ireland for her secondary schooling and then decided to make a home there, now with her own family, she continues to visit Sri Lanka as often as she can.
“I brought my daughter there when she was five months old as I wanted her to meet her great-grandmother, Anneliese de Kretser, before she sadly passed away in June of last year,” she said. “It was a very special time and I hope I can instill the same love and connection to the island for my daughter as my mother did for me.”
The animated short film for which Shauna’s team won the award is also a story about “home.” Dembaya follows a young African girl and her family who are forced to flee from their village due to war and seek refuge in Ireland. They discover as they build a new life that “home” is not a place, but simply the feeling of being together. While Shauna usually works on bigger productions for kids for companies such as Netflix, BBC and Disney, she said she was “fortunate and proud” to be a producer on this passion project of Director Borja Guillot.
“It is a story that transcends borders,” Shauna said, pointing out that the narrative is unfortunately familiar throughout the world. “It deals with a very heavy topic in such a way that it is accessible for children.”
Shauna suspects she first “got the bug” for media in Sri Lanka, where her mother was a news anchor for Capital Maharaja Group.
“We would often visit the studio and stand in for ads when they needed kids voices,” she reminisced. “It was a very fun experience.”
Poster of Dembaya
Shauna completed a degree in Media and German at the Dublin Institute of Technology, followed by a Masters in Media and International Conflict at the Clinton Institute in Dublin at University College Dublin. She wrote her master’s thesis on a comparative state analysis of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka. Later on, she acquired another degree – this time in Animation, from Ballyfermot College of Further Education in Dublin.
“If there is any advice I can give to young people – your career journey does not need to be linear and you can always change your mind!”
Shauna is currently working on a children’s production called BeddyByes which is due to air on the BBC and RTE – Ireland’s national television and radio broadcaster. She has also just written a short script and hopes to secure funding and go into production by the summer of 2025. “Fingers and toes crossed!”