A Cannes-winning Nepali film takes us far beyond the mountains and into a community, a landscape and a side of Nepal rarely seen by the outside world.
When we talk about Nepal to the world, the images are familiar. Mountains. Temples. Prayer flags. Trekking trails. Smiling faces. But Nepal is much bigger, stranger, more complicated and more interesting than the Nepal we usually package for visitors.
And that is why Elephants in the Fog feels very NepalNOW. Written and directed by Abinash Bikram Shah, the film is set in Nepal’s southern plains, in a village beside a forest where wild elephants roam at night. At its centre is Pirati, matriarch of a Kinnar community — a traditional South Asian third-gender community that exists simultaneously inside society and at its margins.
Pirati wants a different life with the man she loves. But when one of her daughters disappears during a night patrol, she stays to search for her, drawing us into a story about family, responsibility, belonging, prejudice and acceptance.
It is a thriller. But it is also a window.
A very different Nepal
The film takes place around Thori in Nepal’s southern Terai. There are no Himalayan panoramas here. Instead there is forest, fog, heat, elephants, villages, rituals and relationships. There is also the complicated position of the Kinnar community: people who can be called into homes to give blessings at important moments, while remaining marginalised in everyday life.
That contradiction runs through the film. The elephants themselves are interesting in much the same way. Revered culturally, but chased away when they cross the invisible boundary between forest and village.
Who belongs on which side of a boundary? Who gets accepted? And what happens when that boundary is crossed? Those are deeply local questions in the film, but also remarkably universal ones.
A Nepali story reaching the world
Elephants in the Fog had its world premiere at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section — and won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize. It is Abinash Bikram Shah’s first feature film as director.
That matters. Not simply because a Nepali film won an important international award. It matters because of which Nepal reached that stage.
Not Everest. Not a postcard. A story from the plains, centred around people who themselves rarely get to occupy the centre of a story. That, for us, is something worth celebrating.
And then something very NepalNOW happened
In the days following the devastating Rasuwa floods, while rescue operations were still continuing, Elephants in the Fog became part of another story.
A pre-release screening was organised in Kathmandu as a fundraiser for the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund. Think about that for a moment. A Nepali film telling the story of a marginalised community, after travelling all the way to Cannes and winning there, coming home — and being used to help communities affected by a disaster in another corner of Nepal.
Culture. Community. Solidarity. Different Nepals connecting with each other. There is something quite beautiful about that.
This is also why NepalNOW exists
NepalNOW began because we needed better ways of showing the world what was actually happening in Nepal. That means accurate information when there is a crisis.
It means explaining that the devastating floods in Rasuwa are concentrated along one river corridor, rather than allowing images from that disaster to define an entire country.
But NepalNOW cannot only be about crises. It also needs to tell the stories of Nepal happening now.
Films being made. Artists creating. Communities changing. Old traditions surviving. Young people questioning things. People rebuilding bridges. Travellers crossing the country.
And occasionally, a film from a small village beside an elephant forest carrying one of Nepal’s least-seen communities all the way to Cannes. That is Nepal too. Perhaps one of the most interesting parts.
This is NepalNOW.
Elephants in the Fog / Tiniharu
Written & Directed by Abinash Bikram Shah
Winner — Jury Prize, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 2026
Press Kit
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