Sulaimani: Vinnie Ann Bose builds a Kerala restaurant in Paris in stop motion, with memories painted in 2D

Cartoon Brew profiled Sulaimani as a contender for the 2027 animated short Oscar. The film is already eligible: it won Best Short Film at the 2025 Manchester Animation Festival and the animation jury award at Aspen Shortsfest 2026. Vinnie Ann Bose, who was born in Kerala, trained at NID Ahmedabad and La Poudrière, calls it her first professional film. It is a French production from Girelle Production and Les Astronautes.

The roughly 20-minute film follows two women from Kerala, strangers to each other, who sit a few metres apart one evening in an Indian restaurant in Paris named Sulaimani. The food, music and language bring back the India each of them left.

Bose splits the film by technique. The present day in the restaurant is stop motion; the memories are hand-painted 2D. She designed the characters so they stay recognisable in both styles while still allowing subtle expressions. The restaurant's miniature food uses stand-in materials: hair gel with tiny pearls for boiling water, plastic wrap for tea being poured, papier-mâché for the porottas and glycerin to give the chicken curry its shine.

The Angers festival Premiers Plans, where Sulaimani was in the 2026 competition, published an interview with Bose about the film.