Now Reading: Nepali film ‘Elephants in the Fog’ wins historic Cannes prize
-
01
Nepali film ‘Elephants in the Fog’ wins historic Cannes prize
Nepali film ‘Elephants in the Fog’ became the first film from the country to win at Cannes, taking the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 79th edition. Millenniumpost reports the feature…
The Story in Brief
Nepali film ‘Elephants in the Fog’ became the first film from the country to win at Cannes, taking the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 79th edition. Millenniumpost reports the feature debut of writer-director Abinash Bikram Shah is set in Thori, a forested village in Nepal’s southern Terai, and follows transgender women on the margins of their community. The story centres on Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar community, who must choose between escaping with the man she loves and investigating when one of her daughters goes missing.
In his acceptance speech, Shah said cinema can look into shadows and make the invisible visible. He dedicated the honour to his team. The film is a co-production between Nepali companies and partners from France, Germany, Brazil and Norway.
The Indian Opinion
This win will be celebrated as a triumph for queer cinema from South Asia, but let’s not flatten it into a mere identity-politics victory. The film succeeds on its own storytelling terms, a debut director from a small film industry, backed by an international co-production, getting noticed in a competitive section. It challenges both the Indian media’s tendency to ignore neighbours’ cultural achievements and the festival circuit’s habit of tokenising marginal stories. Will Indian distributors now pick it up for a release? That answer will show us how serious we are about broadening our screens.
Source: millenniumpost.in
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
