National, May 8, 2025: Saving the Bhimanama: Ayushi Jain and a Giant Turtle, a short film by Roundglass Sustain, has won the Best Documentary – Jury Award at the 15th Dada Sahab Phalke Film Festival.

Directed and presented by award-winning environment journalist Bahar Dutt and nature filmmaker Vijay Bedi, and produced by Roundglass Sustain, Saving the Bhimanama… is an uplifting and heart-warming story of wildlife biologist Ayushi Jain and her work to document and conserve the Cantor’s giant softshell turtle.

The critically endangered Cantor giant softshell turtles are one of the largest (weighing up to 100 kgs) and rarest (with only a few hundred left in the wild) freshwater turtles found in Asia

The highly secretive nature of these creatures makes it difficult to document and study them, making Ayushi’s work and this film even more relevant and urgent. She has been working towards their conservation in Kasargod, Kerala, by engaging the local fishing communities who call this turtle Bhimanama. Highlighting the challenges to this turtle’s survival, Ayushi Jain said, “Dams and sand mining are the two immediate threats to its habitat—sandy banks—and we need to address these threats, and for this, we need extra resources.”

Saving the Bhimanama… is only the second video documentation ever of how these turtles hatch in the wild. The first such documentation was done in Cambodia.

In the film, Jain and Dutt race against time to reach the nesting site and witness the hatchlings gingerly emerge from their shells. After a few days, the tiny baby turtles are gently released into the river as the local community, including the forest officers, stand by and watch their conservation efforts come to fruition. 

Speaking about the win, Bahar Dutt said the award “is a very big deal” for her team. Regarding the story, Dutt said she was struck particularly by “the scale at which Ayushi Jain had been able to mobilise the community and energise the local forest department for the species.” She added, “We are grateful to Roundglass Sustain that enabled us to shine a light on this unique species.”

Neha Dara, head of Roundglass Sustain, added, “We are thrilled to have won this award and would like to thank the jury at the 15th Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival for seeing merit in our film and recognising it. This film about Ayushi’s incredible work done in tandem with the local community aligns perfectly with the storytelling at Roundglass Sustain. We hope that this film helps in shedding the mystery around this rare reptile and mobilises public support to save it from extinction.”  

Saving the Bhimanama: Ayushi Jain and a Giant Turtle had also won a silver award in the Video Spot News/Feature Reporting category in the 2023 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards and is available for viewing on Roundglass Sustain’s YouTube channel.