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In a remote village in Nepal, surrounded by forests where wild elephants roam, Pirati is the matriarch of a household of Kinnar women, a third-gender community navigating discrimination alongside their religious traditions. Pirati dreams of leaving with a local drummer, but when one of the young women in her care disappears during a nightly elephant patrol, those plans are put aside. With little help from the police and resistance from the surrounding community, she begins searching for answers on her own.
Writer and director Abinash Bikram Shah is a Nepalese filmmaker and alumnus of Berlinale Talents, the Sundance Institute and the Locarno Filmmakers Academy. A co-writer of Nepal’s Oscar submissions The Black Hen and Shambhala, Shah became the first Nepali director with a film in Cannes’ official selection with his short Lori. Elephants in the Fog received the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, the first Nepali film to win at the world’s most prestigious film festival.
Elephants in the Fog is both a mystery and an intimate portrait of a community rarely represented on screen, exploring identity, belonging, love and the bonds of a chosen family as Pirati fights to find one of her own.
In a remote village in Nepal, surrounded by forests where wild elephants roam, Pirati is the matriarch of a household of Kinnar women, a third-gender community navigating discrimination alongside their religious traditions. Pirati dreams of leaving with a local drummer, but when one of the young women in her care disappears during a nightly elephant patrol, those plans are put aside. With little help from the police and resistance from the surrounding community, she begins searching for answers on her own.
Writer and director Abinash Bikram Shah is a Nepalese filmmaker and alumnus of Berlinale Talents, the Sundance Institute and the Locarno Filmmakers Academy. A co-writer of Nepal’s Oscar submissions The Black Hen and Shambhala, Shah became the first Nepali director with a film in Cannes’ official selection with his short Lori. Elephants in the Fog received the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, the first Nepali film to win at the world’s most prestigious film festival.
Elephants in the Fog is both a mystery and an intimate portrait of a community rarely represented on screen, exploring identity, belonging, love and the bonds of a chosen family as Pirati fights to find one of her own.