‘What If A Mother’s Daughter Goes Missing?’

‘How will this woman find her? And how does that affect her, because it’s not a biological relationship.’

Nepali filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah started his career writing scripts for other colleagues. Most of the films he co-wrote premiered at major international film festival, like Deepak Rauniyar’s Highway (2012) played at Berlinale. He also co-wrote the scripts of two films by Min Bahadur Bham, Shambhala (2024), which was the first Nepali film in the main competition section at the Berlinale, and The Black Hen (2015) which won the Best Film award in the International Critics Week section at the Venice film festival.

Those who follow Nepali cinema had been waiting for Shah’s own feature project, especially after his short Lori (2022) won a Special Mention at the Cannes film festival.

It took some time, but the lull during COVID finally helped Shah develop his own project. His film Elephants In The Fog became the first Nepali feature to play in the Cannes film festival in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section. The film won the Jury Prize, the second most important award in the section, as well as the Best Sound Creation Award at Cannes.

Elephants In The Fog traces the lives of members of the Kinnar (trans) community based in southern Nepal. Pirati (Pushpa Thing Lama), plays the matriarch of a family, where she watches over her three daughters. The relationship is not biological, and the units are developed by the Guru Ma of the community. Pirati dreams of running off to Birgunj with her drummer boyfriend, until one of her daughters Apsara goes missing.

Shah is inspired by the works of Satyajit Ray and the Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien (The Assassin, 2015) and their influence show in the framing and the narrative structure of Elephants In The Fog.

It is a moving tale of love and loss, with most roles played by members of the Kinnar community. The film does not show Nepal’s mountains and touristy spots. Rather it focuses on the daily lives and struggles of the Kinnars. Most of the film is shot in villages and the dense forests in the south of the country, along the Indian border.

Elephants In The Fog is a Nepali, German, French, Brazilian and Norwegian co-production. Shah and his producer Anup Poudel put together an ensemble of international crew. French musician Frederic Alvarez composed the music of the film. His past projects have included the Bhutanese film The Monk and the Gun. And Elephants In The Fog‘s French cinematographer Noé Bach also shot A Women’s Life, which played in the main competition of this year’s Cannes festival. The film’s sound designer Henrique Chiurciu is from Brazil.

Aseem Chhabra spoke to Abinash in Cannes after the film won the jury award. The director and his team had spent the night partying, celebrating their win, and yet, he was full of energy to talk about the project.

“Families have always fascinated me. Before meeting the Kinnars, I didn’t know they have this mother-daughter relationship,” he says.

Abinash, why were you drawn to the Kinnar community and how did their lives become the basis of your narrative?

It’s because they live in a family. Most of the writing I have done and even what I am writing right now focus on families. Families have always fascinated me. Before meeting the Kinnars, I didn’t know they have this mother-daughter relationship. I have seen them from childhood. I knew they existed. But I finally met them during the COVID time.

COVID was such a difficult time. Just to avoid thinking of the horror of the time, I used to scroll through phones and watch a lot of films. There, I met this group of friends, watching TikTok videos. Some of the Kinnars were making beautiful, fun videos, and posting them on TikTok.

I was hooked! I would go through their videos, seeing them happy. There were many hate comments but that didn’t stop them from making the videos. I was intrigued.

When there was some break in the lockdown, I went to meet them. I noticed something quite profound. Society didn’t accept them. But they are living as a family and that family was quite similar to our own, kind of dysfunctional. They would fight, but there was also love. I wanted to explore that.

Also around that time, there was news about a violent incident involving a Kinnar woman. I was deeply disturbed, not just by the violence, but also how quickly the conversation shifted to judging the woman’s life, rather than addressing the crime committed against her.

How difficult was it to reach out to the community and convince them that you wanted to narrate a story set in their midst?

Actually, it was really hard, even though we went through the NGO, the Blue Diamond Society of Nepal. They first thought I was an outsider trying to make a film that would make a lot of money. It took time.

I went to meet them so many times. But then slowly I made them realise that I can very empathetically find a story within them.

Just finding them was so hard since they lived somewhere in the Chitwan district in Southeast Nepal and I was in Kathmandu. The distance is about 120 km.

They were welcoming but I could feel they were not opening up. Slowly I gained their trust, even when I didn’t have a definite story and script.

I am glad you didn’t make your characters exotic. It could be so easy to fall into that trap. You have dealt with the people at the centre of your canvas with a great deal of warmth and humanity. They are regular human beings. How did you get that tonality?

Like you said, one can approach the story like an ethnographic film, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted this film to be about a mother and her daughter. My short film Lori was also about a mother and daughter relationship.

With Elephants In The Fog the question was what if a mother’s daughter goes missing? How will this woman find her? And how does that affect her, because it’s not a biological relationship.

How did you pick the reference to the elephants?

I was struggling for a while to find a name for this film. It was a different name earlier. At one point during the research, one of the mothers told me the story about the four blind men and an elephant, and how each one narrates a different sense by touching one part of the elephant.

She said that people in our part of the world had such a limited perspective about the lives of the Kinnar community.

Either they look at them as hijras who give blessings or curses. Others looked at them as sex workers. But they don’t see the Kinnars as human beings. I found the parallel with the story about the blind men and the elephant very interesting.

Later when I researched more, I realised that the community had so many problems with the elephants. I also learned that the elephant is a matriarchal animal, so my script changed quite a lot. And I found a name for the film.

You know, in India, there’s such a taboo against the hijra community.

It’s the same culture and attitude in Nepal.

But when you wrote the story, you humanised your characters. You gave them love and affection. Did you have any concerns about how the general public would relate to them?

Yes, there was fear. I was worried when the trailer was released. I had the fear that trolls would criticise the film. But I was surprised that there was just one transphobic comment. Most people were really encouraging.

I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing, but after the Cannes premiere, one person in the audience told me that she didn’t think it was a story about trans women. She said for her, it was a story about a mother and her daughter.

Obviously, that’s a positive comment because basically what this woman was saying is that while the characters in the film are trans people, they just happen to be who they are. The story is about love, whether straight, gay, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, no matter which group you belong to, people can connect to this love. Also you are highlighting a community, and there is a mystery element in your film.

I made a conscious choice to add the genre element to the film. It’s not exactly a thriller film, but I wanted to engage the audiences from other parts of the world.

I was concerned because the film doesn’t have any big stars. All of them are non-actors and all of them are trans women. Most of the actors we found from the Blue Diamond Society.

And in Nepal, we are so heavily influenced by Bollywood films. So there was the worry whether we will find an audience for this film.

Did Deepak Rauniyar’s films like Highway, The White Sun and Pooja, Sir, make money in Nepal? What about Shambhala?

Shambhala did okay business. But the others did not get big success.

I was talking to your producer Anup Poudel about sound design, which was developed in Brazil, and the music in the film. I loved the way you used the clapping sound, especially towards the end, as it echoes in the forest.

The film is about the magical element of the clapping by the trans people, so that was very important.

During the discussions with the sound designers, I told them to be mindful of the sounds of the villages, the forests and the city. The village had to be calm, quiet, while the city had to be chaotic. Maybe we can work in between, and the women want to go from the quietness to the noise of the crowds.

You worked with the Indian production designer, Mausam Agarwal, a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India. How did that come about?

I saw her work in Fire in the Mountain (2021). I liked her work and tracked her.

She also worked on Shadowbox/Baksho Bondi (2025).

In fact, Mausam, my cinematographer Noé Bach and I have one thing in common: We are inspired by Nan Goldin’s photographs. She’s great photographer, and there is a rawness and grittiness in her work. So we talked a lot about Nan’s photos, while determining the look of our film.

Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff