A Nepali drama that made festival history this spring is now building international momentum on multiple fronts. “Elephants in the Fog,” which won the Jury Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in May, has sold to distributors in ten additional territories while screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and carrying Nepal’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature.
Brussels-based sales company Best Friend Forever announced new deals covering the United Kingdom, Spain, the Benelux countries, Switzerland, Israel, Australia, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, plus an inflight licensing agreement. Those additions build on earlier arrangements in France, Germany, Austria and Brazil, along with local Nepali distribution. A deal covering Latin America is expected soon, and negotiations for North American rights are underway.
Directed by Abinash Bikram Shah in his feature debut, the film follows Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar community living at the edge of a forest where wild elephants regularly threaten village crops and homes. Kinnar women occupy a distinct third-gender tradition in South Asia, alternately revered for their power to bless and feared for their perceived ability to curse. Shah’s story turns personal when one of Pirati’s adopted daughters vanishes during a nighttime elephant watch, pulling her between loyalty to her chosen family and a forbidden relationship with a man outside the community.
Shot largely on location by cinematographer Noé Bach, the film became Nepal’s first entry into Cannes’ main Official Selection. It lost the section’s top prize to Sandra Wollner’s “Everytime” but claimed the runner-up honor, a result director Shah called validation for stories that rarely reach international screens. Since Cannes, the film has picked up the Fresh Competition Award and an audience prize at the New Zealand International Film Festival and drawn three nominations from the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
Critics have pointed to the film’s genre blending as a distinguishing trait, noting how it moves between social drama and mystery without losing sight of the Kinnar characters at its center. Shah previously directed the short film “Lori,” which received a special mention at Cannes in 2022. The production involved companies from Nepal, France, Germany, Brazil and Norway, reflecting the kind of multinational financing increasingly common for filmmakers working outside major industry hubs.
