Tina Kakadelis
Abinash Bikram Shah’s directorial debut, Elephants in the Fog, had its world premiere at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Un Certain Regard jury prize. The film now comes to the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival for its North American premiere. The selection of Shah’s previous short film into the 2022 Cannes Festival made him the first Nepali director to be part of the festival and opened the door for Elephants in the Fog. The feature film was developed over the course of a few years before it made its way to the global stage.
Elephants in the Fog takes place in a Kinnar community in rural Nepal. These communities are defined by their close-knit nature, with an emphasis on ritual and rites led by a guru. Most people who live in Kinnar communities are third-gender individuals who often identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. Pirati (Puspa Thing Lama) is the community’s matriarch of sorts. One of the main aspects of the Kinnar community is the weight they put on the concept of chosen family. When a new member, also called a daughter, is initiated, they’re brought into a new family. As a longtime member, Pirati has a few daughters, but it is Apsara (Aliz Ghimire) she takes a liking to. This world of peaceful coexistence is thrown into disarray when Apsara runs away from home.
Much of Elephants in the Fog is about the push and pull of life between the Kinnar community and the world around them, and for a long while there’s acceptance and kindness between the groups. Pirati is well-known and well-liked by both her community and the general public, but when accusations start to fly around Apsara’s disappearance, a schism appears. The film speaks to the way people and communities pretend to be open-minded until they need someone to blame. Then, vitriol comes spewing out of their mouths as they denounce everything they previously supported because their way of life is threatened. One of the ugliest reflexes in humanity is this need to always have someone at the bottom of the ladder to feel better about oneself. Surely it’s a remnant of the survival of the fittest mentality that got humans to this point, but now it’s cruelty for the sake of inflicting hierarchy.
One critique about Elephants in the Fog is a sense of disappointment that this is the film from Nepal to receive global critical acclaim. There’s a longstanding issue in the film community that movies of marginalized people only make waves in the mainstream when they’re plumbing the tragedies of their existence. That’s not to say these stories shouldn’t be told. Elephants in the Fog is an extremely empathetic look at a community whose existence isn’t well-known around the world, and it gives viewers an opportunity to learn about a way of life they’ll likely never experience. The critique comes from the fact that this shouldn’t be the only Nepalese film in mainstream conversations. It’s a cycle that keeps repeating; where only one movie per year is elevated from a country that’s not known as a film powerhouse. Speaking as a member of the queer community, a similar phenomenon has occurred for decades, with circumstances changing only in recent years.
Beyond the story of a missing person, Elephants in the Fog is about the friction between the life the world has prescribed for you and the one you want to live. Pirati is told by the guru, “You have a gift for holding everyone together.” Yet all she wants to do is run away to Nepal with her lover. To live for herself instead of others. There’s a fine line between feeling protective with a desire to care for others and having that eclipse one’s own drive in life. Elephants in the Fog is a film that fears the unknown. That could be wild elephants lurking in the fog, the Kinnar community, the surrounding village, or life without a roadmap. All these things pose a threat to an established way of life, yet it’s family, however you describe it, that lays the groundwork for finding a way forward.
