Los Angeles: Indian-American Pixar artist and director Sanjay Patel’s debut animated short film ‘Sanjay’s Super Team’ has been nominated for the upcoming 88th Academy Awards.

The film has been nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category along with four other movies.

Patel’s movie will be competing with ‘Bear Story’, directed by Gabriel Osorio, ‘World of Tomorrow’, helmed by Don Hertzfeldt, Richard Williams’s ‘Prologue’ and ‘We Can’t Live Without Cosmos’, directed by Konstantin Bronzit.

The Indian American animator debut film “Sanjay’s Super Team”, is the first Pixar film on Hindu deities and the first Pixar toon by an Indian-origin director, is a short superhero movie.

The seven-minute short is based on director Sanjay Patel’s own childhood — specifically the culture clash he experienced with his devout father growing up in San Bernadino, California. “Every morning my dad worshipped his gods and his shrine, and I worshipped mine in mine — which was the TV,” Patel told Yahoo Movies during a recent phone interview. And that’s exactly how the short starts out, with little Sanjay watching his favorite cartoon, the fictional Super Team.

Working as an animator with Pixar since 1996, Sanjay Patel made his first project that revolves around Hindu deities who are like avengers, Variety.com news portal reported.

Mr Patel’s film revolves around a little Hindu boy who prefers cartoons of superheroes while his father wants him to join the morning prayers, the report said.

One day, the boy sees Vishnu, Hanuman and Durga as the avengers who save him from a problem.

While he was researching about the characters of Hindu mythology from the comic books of Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Tales), he did not actually draw according to them, he said.

Mr Patel said the story of the film is as much about Sanjay’s relationship with his father.

“I was a late bloomer in my parents’ culture,” he said, adding that after working for 10 years at Pixar he discovered Indian art and mythology.

“It helped me understand why my parents said ‘Sita Ram’ when I sneezed,” Mr Patel joked.

Mr Patel has worked as an animator on films like “Monsters Inc.”, “Ratatouille”, “Cars”, “Monsters University”, “Toy Story 2” and “The Incredibles”, and has been a story-boarder on the latter two films.