“Elephants in the Fog”, Interview with director Abinash Bikram Shah

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “Elephants in the Fog” is the feature debut of Nepali writer-director Abinash Bikram Shah, and the first Nepali film ever selected for the section. Set in Thori, a forested village in Nepal’s southern Terai plains, the film follows Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar family, an ancient third-gender community both revered and feared whose dream of escaping with the man she loves is shattered when one of her daughters disappears during a nightly patrol against wild elephants. Pushpa Thing Lama stars in the lead role.

A family found on TikTok

The film’s genesis lies in an unlikely place. During the Covid lockdowns, Abinash Bikram Shah was scrolling through TikTok when he came across videos of Kinnar women dancing, joking, performing with joy. The comments underneath were vile, filled with transphobia. But the women kept posting. That contradiction pulled him in. He visited the community repeatedly before writing a single line, drawn to the dynamics of a family that is not biological but no less real. “They are mostly outcast from society, from the family, and they found a new family to live in just to survive, just to belong somewhere. And the family that they live in, it’s so similar to what you call a “normal” family. It’s so dysfunctional for sure, but at the same time, there’s so much love, warmth, and everything”.

The pain of a non-biological mother

What Abinash Bikram Shah wanted to test was a question that traditional family dramas rarely ask: what happens when someone disappears from a chosen family? The pain is the same, but the world’s response is not. “We have all seen films about biological families where someone goes missing and how desperately they search. Here, the challenge is that they are not a biological family. But what if one goes missing? The pain and strength of Pirati as a mother, regardless of the origin of the relationship, is the motor and the centre of the movie”.

Building trust with Pushpa

Casting Pushpa Thing Lama as Pirati was instinctive. Abinash Bikram Shah describes seeing her for the first time as love at first sight. But the path to the performance was long and difficult. Heavily influenced by Bollywood, Pushpa Thing Lama‘s initial work in front of the camera was far from the naturalism the film demanded. Workshops and acting lessons didn’t help. What eventually unlocked the performance was something simpler: closeness. “Slowly, I became closer to her, and we built a trust factor. It was a very long process because Pirati is such a complex character. It took a lot of time, but it was worth it”.

Bringing the elephant out of the fog

The title carries layers of meaning that Abinash Bikram Shah traces back to a story told to him by a mother in the community: the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each one touches a different part of the animal and mistakes it for something else entirely. “She said that in Nepal, people see them with that same limited perspective. They see them as Kinnar women with powers or as sex workers, but they don’t see them as whole human beings”. Abinash Bikram Shah then discovered that elephants are matriarchal animals, which deepened the parallel with Pirati’s family. There is also the contradiction at the heart of Hindu culture: worshipping the elephant-headed god while scaring real elephants away. “My job as a director and writer is to bring that elephant out of the fog. We want their blessing, but we don’t want them around. This analogy flows so well with the story”.

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