– The writer-director’s eagerly awaited feature debut represents another milestone in the prominence of Nepalese films on the global stage
Elephants in the Fog by Abinash Bikram Shah
Nepalese filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah brings his feature debut, Elephants in the Fog, to the 2026 Cannes Official Selection, via Un Certain Regard (see the news). But this is not his first time on the Croisette: his short film Lori (Melancholy of My Mother’s Lullabies) received a Special Jury Mention in the Cannes Shorts competition in 2022.
Shah was the co-writer of Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambhala, which was in competition at the Berlinale in 2024, as well as the writer of Deepak Rauniyar’s Highway, which premiered in the 2012 Berlinale Panorama section. He has also cut his teeth creating two popular Nepalese TV series as lead writer.
Elephants in the Fog is a co-production between Brazil, France, Germany, Nepal and Norway. The film stars Aliz Ghimire, Jasmine Bishwokarma, Deepak Yadav and Pushpa Thing Lama, who are joined behind the camera by editor Andrew Bird (Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig), cinematographer Noé Bach (Naël Marandin’s Beasts) and composer Frederic Alvarez (Emmanuelle Nicot’s Love According to Dalva).
Set in a Nepalese village located in a forest filled with wild elephants, Elephants in the Fog has been described as a thriller about a woman, Pirati, from Nepal’s Kinnar community. She must choose between investigating her daughter’s disappearance and her responsibility to the community, for whom she is a matriarchal figure. Kinnar is one of several terms associated with transgender, intersex and nonbinary individuals in South Asia.
Shah’s feature debut has already embarked on a long and rigorous road to the festival. The film participated in Busan’s Asian Project Market in 2021 and the Venice Gap-Financing Market in 2023, received a development grant from the Hubert Bals Fund, and went through script development in the 2022 Oxbelly Lab and 2023 Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab.
Elephants in the Fog also received a production grant of €40,000 from the World Cinema Fund and participated in European Work in Progress in Hamburg late last year, collecting an award worth €30,000 for post-production services for its “masterful and mature directing”, while the jury was sure that it would “be one of the debut highlights of the year” (see the news).
The movie is being produced by Anup Poudel, of Nepal’s Underground Talkies Nepal; Justin Pechberty, of France’s Les Valseurs; and Michael Henrichs, of Germany’s Die Gesellschaft DGS. It is being co-produced by Prachanda Man Shrestha, of Nepal’s Jayantii Creations; Paul Zischler, of Germany’s Zischlermann Filmproduktion; Leonardo Mecchi, of Brazil’s Enquadramento; Tatiana Leite, of Brazil’s Bubbles Project; and Verona Meier, of Norway’s Storm Films. Its world sales are represented by Brussels-based Best Friend Forever.
