Kathmandu, April 11 Filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah believes that "Elephants in the Fog" has not opened doors for Nepali cinema, despite its success at the Cannes Film Festival. He asserts that Nepali stories have always been powerful, but the world simply hasn't paid attention.
"Elephants in the Fog" is the first Nepali film to compete in Un Certain Regard, the second most prestigious section at Cannes, which runs parallel to the main competition for the Palme d'Or.
The film, a part of the 15-title lineup for the segment, will vie for the Un Certain Regard prize, the best director award, and the jury prize during the festival, scheduled to be held in France from May 12 to 23.
"I'm hesitant to say this film opens the door for everyone else. I don't think any single film can claim that. Nepal has always had hundreds of powerful, complex stories, and these stories have always been here.
"What hasn't always been consistent is the space and visibility for those stories to reach a global stage. So, I see this selection more as a signal to the world to stop looking past us," Shah told
"I hope it gives them the confidence to believe that our specific, locally rooted stories can travel to the world stage, without needing to reshape their voices to be heard," he said.
When asked about the historic significance of being the first Nepali film in Un Certain Regard, Shah said it is a combination of both pride and pressure.
"There is a moment of personal pride in achieving something you once only hoped for, but there’s also a certain weight that comes with it. The pressure, for me, is more about the story, and how honestly I’ve told the story I set out to tell. It feels like a quiet tug-of-war between pride and pressure," he added.
For Shah, Cannes has been a familiar ground as his short film “Lori” received a Special Mention at the 75th edition, becoming the first Nepali short to earn the honour.
After that experience, the director said he made a promise to himself -- he would return to the festival with a feature film. And it was the desire to tell the story of “Elephants in the Fog” that ultimately helped him fulfil that promise.
"There were many moments when I questioned whether I was capable of doing it, or whether it was even possible. At times, the promise felt more like pressure than motivation.
"But the urgency of the story kept returning. What was happening around us, socio-politically, made the story feel necessary. I also had people around me who held me to that promise I had made myself. In the end, it was a mix of persistence, doubt, and urgency that kept it alive," he said.
Set in a small Nepali village on the edge of a forest inhabited by wild elephants, the story follows Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar community, who dreams of leaving it all behind for a “normal” life with the man she loves.
But when one of her daughters goes missing, she is forced to investigate, torn between her personal desires and her responsibility to the community.
The cast includes Pushpa Thing Lama, Deepika Yadav, Jasmine Bishwokarma and Aliz Ghimire.
According to the director, the emotional core of the film is shaped by his own life.
Having lost his father early, Shah grew up close to his mother and surrounded by the women in his family -- an experience that informed his decision to anchor "Elephants in the Fog" in a mother-daughter relationship.
"I’ve always seen how deep and layered these relationships can be, especially between a mother and a daughter. That understanding is what shaped the emotional core of this film, and why the mother-daughter bond felt like the most natural anchor
for the story.
"It’s often where we first learn love, conflict, and acceptance. In a world that can be harsh and exclusionary, the home becomes the first place where those tensions play out, but also where the possibility of acceptance begins. I wanted that relationship to ground the film, so that even the larger social and political themes feel intimate and human," he said.
About the film's cast, the director said the whole process took almost two years.
"From the beginning, we were clear that we wanted our lead actors to come from sexual and gender minority communities, and that we wanted new faces as much as possible," he said, adding that the team travelled across the country to find people from different walks of life who could bring their lived experiences into the characters.
At the same time, he also roped in trained actors from theatre and film backgrounds.
"That balance was important. The non-actors bring a certain rawness and unpredictability, while the professionals bring studied discipline and structure. The space between the two created something that felt both grounded and alive," Shah said.
For Shah, the film's two seemingly disparate threads -- ecological conflict and the marginalisation of the Kinnar community -- are not as separate as they appear.
"When you look closely, these conflicts aren't very different. They intersect more often than we acknowledge," he said.
The marginalisation of people across caste, gender and identity is deeply connected to how societies relate to land, forests and other living beings, he added.
"At their core, both come from the same instinct — to dominate, to categorize, to control what we see as 'other.' The violence against nature and the exclusion of certain bodies are part of the same conversation," Shah said.
"Elephants in the Fog" is a co-production between Nepali companies Underground Talkies Nepal and Jayanthi Creations, with partners from France, Germany, Brazil and Norway. It is produced by Anup Paudel and Prachanda Man Shrestha.
