Cannes 2026 | Nepal’s Abinash Bikram Shah: My goal is to move from ‘them’ to ‘us’

Abinash Bikram Shah calls India his “second home”. He recalls increasing up proceeding Mani Ratnam’s movie songs (Roja and Bombay) connected Nepal’s thoroughfare corners. Bollywood films reached him via VCRs and Doordarshan. “My friends telephone maine pretentious erstwhile I accidental I emotion Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth and Dimple Kapadia’s Rudaali. In 2000, I came to cognize astir Satyajit Ray, and my position was changed,” says Shah, who speaks of heavy friendships crossed the border. Albeit immoderate of them person been “jokingly racist [towards him] for fun,” helium says with a smile. For generations, Nepalese person seen India arsenic a destination: economical oregon spiritual, arsenic evinced by 2 characters successful Shah’s debut diagnostic Elephants successful the Fog. One wants to fly to Delhi to commencement a caller beingness with her lover, and the different wants to walk her last days successful Varanasi.

What began arsenic a TikTok binge ticker during the pandemic led Shah to Nepal’s trans assemblage and yet to Cannes. “I’m looking guardant to seeing however the assemblage volition instrumentality this film, and of a antheral who truthfully made a movie astir transwomen,” says Shah, whose abbreviated movie Lori (Melancholy of my Mother’s Lullabies) in 2022 won the Cannes Short Film Palme d’Or Special Jury Mention. If successful 2022, Saim Sadiq created past with Joyland as the archetypal Pakistani movie to beryllium selected (and triumph 2 awards) successful Un Certain Regard, this year, Shah creates past with Elephants successful the Fog (Tinihāru). It is the first-ever Nepalese diagnostic to participate Cannes (Un Certain Regard), and premieres connected May 20. The communal nexus is the foregrounding of transwomen and their close to emotion and dignity. If the erstwhile presents an idiosyncratic arsenic a societal equal, the second zooms successful connected the community’s layered, analyzable and dichotomous reality.

Produced by 5 countries (and 10 producers!), Elephants successful the Fog shows the parent fig arsenic the taste and motivation anchor of this “chosen family.” The mother-daughter dynamics are a recurring trope successful Shah’s films. This time, helium juxtaposes the imagery of the matriarchal Kinnar/Hijra (trans) assemblage with that of elephants, which are tight-knit, female-led clans, guided by a matriarch. This assemblage lives on the Chitwan National Park, adjacent the India-Nepal border. When Pirati (Pushpa Thing Lama), the next-in-line matriarch leader, is torn betwixt idiosyncratic tendency and communal responsibility, her girl Apsara goes missing. Edited successful Germany by seasoned Andrew Bird and Paris J. Ludwig, who’s a transwoman, the societal play spirals into a intelligence thriller.

Edited excerpts from an interview:

Question: Before being a director, you are a screenwriter. You’ve written for Deepak Rauniyar (Highway, 2012) and Min Bahadur Bham (Shambhala, 2025). What bash you bask more: penning for others oregon for yourself?

Answer: With different people, I thin to fto spell of the publication astatine immoderate point. For me, cinema is simply a director’s medium. When I’m penning for myself, it’s much visual; I cognize what I privation to do. Highway was my archetypal diagnostic screenplay. Deepak shared a basal communicative idea, and I wrote with that thread. Min and I wrote together. Shambhala’s communicative was wholly Min’s. I wrote the archetypal draft, fixed the operation and brought successful characters’ depth.

Q. Has Nepalese mainstream evolved from Bollywood rehash? Which Nepalese indie filmmakers paved the way for filmmakers similar you to emerge?

A. Nabin Subba and Tsering Rhitar Sherpa’s films person this Nepali authenticity. They inspired america and took Nepali cinema to planetary festivals. Subba’s movie A Road to a Village (2023) was screened astatine the Toronto International Film Festival. They gave america the courageousness to archer that determination volition beryllium radical acceptable to perceive our stories, perceive to our voices, and that our films truly matter. My contemporaries are Deepak, Min, Pooja (Gurung) and Bibhushan (Basnet).

[Mainstream Nepali cinema] has evolved. Nischal Basnet’s movie Loot (2012) had a spot of heightened play but was caller due to the fact that helium chose the actors from the theatre, precise raw-looking, and determination were nary song-and-dance. After that film, radical started going successful that direction; still, it’s not realistic.

Q.How was your movie calved and the thought of showing human-animal co-existence and marginalisation, some arsenic forces of nature?

A. To debar quality during the lockdown, successful 2020, I was scrolling reels a batch connected my telephone and watching films. On TikTok, I came crossed a amusive video of a radical of Kinnars surviving arsenic a family, with their ain rituals and language, each of which fascinated me. But the comments were truthful bad. Earlier, I’d lone seen transwomen either from the Blue Diamond Society (rights group) oregon those into enactment work. And that excessively lone successful Kathmandu. But the ones I saw successful the video were from the confederate portion of Nepal, adjacent the Indian border. The Kinnars are invited into homes to springiness their blessings, but aren’t invited for long. That contradiction fascinated me. In my films, I’m ever drawn towards this conception of family, and to the persons who are pushed to the edge. 

Q. At what constituent did the wood and elephants (the ecological conservation metaphor) participate the script?

A. It is due to the fact that these Kinnars were surviving successful that portion of the country, adjacent to the Chitwan National Park, adjacent the India-Nepal border. One of the trans mothers asked maine whether I’d heard this communicative astir the elephant and the unsighted man, and past explained: since the unsighted antheral doesn’t cognize what the elephant looks similar arsenic a whole, helium touches its limb and thinks it’s a pillar; helium touches its tail, and thinks it’s a rope. Then she said the astir profound thing: ‘The nine doesn’t cognize america arsenic a whole, either they deliberation we are these radical with magical powerfulness to bless, oregon we are enactment workers. They don’t see america arsenic a full quality being.’ That made maine research the elephant part. We besides person this Elephant God (Ganesha). When idiosyncratic disturbs the presumption quo, elephants travel into the villages, destroying crops and houses. It’s astir that contradiction.

Q. The close-ups, blue-grey, foggy acheronian frames are spectacular. What was your little to the cinematographer? 

A. We chose the stills from [American photographer] Nan Goldin’s photographs [documenting LGBTQ+ communities], which are truthful raw, intimate, and real, and worked successful that direction. My cinematographer Noé Bach is French; helium has done respective different films and has 4 films astatine Cannes this twelvemonth [A Woman’s Life; Wild Diamond; Little Girl Blue]. What struck him the astir was the magical powerfulness of the [transwomen] community.

We besides person a accumulation decorator from India, Mausam Aggarwal [Shadowbox; Nasir]. I truly loved her film, (Ajitpal Singh’s) Fire successful the Mountains (2021). We 3 unneurotic designed the film’s temper and scenes’ looks.

Q. Talk astir the outsider regard of you arsenic a non-trans idiosyncratic telling the communicative of the Kinnars and of mothers and daughters.

A. My abbreviated film, Lori, was besides astir a mother-daughter relationship. That is due to the fact that I’m surviving with and caring for my ageing azygous mother. It’s specified a valid constituent that being a man, you cannot archer the communicative of the Other: of a woman/mother, and of the trans community, but I judge we indispensable spell wherever our empathy leads us, different if we make these rigid boundaries wherever antheral tin lone archer the man’s story, we are again reinforcing the aforesaid partition that my movie is suppressing. The Nepalese rubric of my movie is Tinihāru, which means ‘them’. My extremity is to determination from ‘them’ to ‘us.’I went to their assemblage without a script. Just for research, to look for stories. It’s been a precise agelong process (two years) to archer this story, and for me, the authenticity is the astir important thing. I don’t privation to beryllium from the outside, proceeding them, nor to travel from a presumption of authority, but from 1 of authenticity. And the authenticity comes erstwhile you walk clip with them, recognize them from their perspective, and past the last communicative emerges. Some of the actors, including the pb Pirati, are from the aforesaid community. That besides makes this communicative consciousness authentic to me, and little similar maine looking from the outside. Pirati/Pushpa lives acold away, 200 km from Kathmandu. I had to spell to her place. When I took her for this country exercise, she was ‘acting’, similar successful Bollywood oregon Nepali films. I had to marque her judge that it’s her story, not idiosyncratic else’s.

Q. India precocious rolled backmost transgender persons’ close to self-identify. In comparison, successful the South Asian portion today, Nepal is the astir progressive connected LGBTQ+ rights. It celebrated the region’s archetypal ineligible trans marriage, it has a trans politician. Your film, however, shows the crushed world is different.

A. It’s each astir the societal contradiction towards them. Nepal is progressive, for sure, and trans persons are coming out, and it’s precise bully that’s happening successful our country. There are governmental and different enactment and provisions provided to transgender people. The Blue Diamond Society has been moving for LGBT+ rights for 25-30 years. Because of them, the trans radical aren’t acrophobic of coming out. One of the caller MPs (member of Parliament Bhumika Shrestha) is simply a transwoman. It’s progressive, but (social) mindset isn’t rather truthful due to the fact that we are a blimpish society. Nepal and India are precise similar.