APM - Asian Project Market

 

Back to list Elephants in the Fog

Director’s Profile

Abinash Bikram Shah is an award-winning, freelance writer / director. An alumnus of Locarno Filmmakers Academy, Berlinale Talents and the Asian Film Academy, Abinash has written, directed and produced short films that have participated and won awards at many international film festivals. He has also written feature films which premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012 and Venice International Film Festival Critics Week 2015, as well as Nepal′s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards 2017. In addition, he has created two of Nepal’s most popular television series, both as the lead writer. While working as a programming director for Ekadeshma International Short Film Festival, Abinash is currently preparing his directorial debut film.
Selected Filmography
I AM HAPPY (2011) - Writer / Director - (Short Film premiered at Busan International Film Festival 2011)
Highway (Deepak Rauniyar, 2012) - Writer - (Feature Film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012)
The Black Hen (Min Bahadur Bham, 2015) - Writer - (Feature Film premiered at Venice International Film Festival 2015)
The Moon Is Bright Tonight (2018) - Writer / Director - (Short Film premiered at Busan International Film Festival 2018)
The Glorious Face (2021) - Writer / Director (Short Film in Post-Production)
Simri (2021) - Writer / Director (Medium Length Film in Post-Production)

Synopsis

Elephants in the Fog is about a group of five trans-women, who are on the verge of breaking up, living in a small village terrorized by wild elephants. Led by the witty and sly matriarch, PIRATI (40), they make ends meet by performing at other people’s celebrations. Each night, they volunteer a member for the village patrol team, to keep the wild elephants away.
PIRATI is an amateur practitioner of herbal medicine, who provides free herbal treatments for the villagers, listens to their secrets, and deliberately demeans herself in front of them in order to keep them happy and win their trust. She is impatient to develop her herbal medicine business, which is slowly gaining momentum, and desires to quit her current profession. But the final decision rests in the hands of PIRATI’s guru, the ‘grandmother’ of their group.
One night, the youngest member of the group, APSARA goes missing. Blame falls on PIRATI, whose negligence of the family due to her personal aspirations, and her everyday conflicts with the other trans-women, could have played a part in APSARA’s disappearance. Her guru, annoyed, orders PIRATI to find APSARA before their Biwaha ceremony in ten days, or else, she will not let her leave. PIRATI must now find APSARA if she wants to be free to pursue her dreams.
But in her search, PIRATI has to deal with the villagers and the patrol team, who don’t care about her group; the police, who have better things to do than find a missing trans-woman; APSARA’s family, for whom APSARA has been dead since she came out; and the deep, dark forest, which holds greater threats than the wild elephants.

Achievements

2026 Cannes film festival - Un Certain Regard

Back to list