Shakhnazar Borboev

Shakhnazar Borboev is a Central Asian artist and animator. Forbes Kazakhstan describes him as a Kyrgyz director, while another Kazakh outlet groups all three directors of Kök Börü as Kazakhstani.

He co-directed Kök Börü, the 15-minute animated short from AI video company Higgsfield, with Amina Ömirjan and Stepan Abramov; it premiered at SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles in July 2026. Set in 15th-century Central Asia, it follows Ana, a nomadic mother who searches for the daughter a wolf pack took years earlier. Higgsfield says it was made in two weeks by a small team pairing AI generation with hand-drawn animation, using its Soul Cartoon and Motion Control tools on Nvidia GPUs, with native Kazakh actors voicing the characters. Abramov's credit list for the film also names Borboev in production and as an editor.

In a statement on the release he said that artists from Central Asia grow up with stories like this but almost never see them on screen, and that such films do not always get the chance to be made. Variety reported that he and Ömirjan doubted a traditional studio would have greenlit the film.