Elephants in the Fog

At night, villagers march through the Nepalese jungle with torches to drive away wild elephants. Pirati, too, sends her daughters out on patrol. She heads a community of Kinnar women who, as members of a third gender, are revered for their blessings but excluded in everyday life. Pirati dreams of leaving with her lover, although her community’s vow of chastity forbids such a love. When her daughter Apsara does not return from a night patrol, she begins to search herself. But the local police show hardly any interest in the missing girl.

The Nepalese filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah, who already co-wrote festival hits such as “The Black Hen” and “Shambhala”, turns this mystical starting point into a thriller drama that is at once sensual and political. Cinematographer Noé Bach bathes the jungle in a damp, lush green and lets landscapes vanish in the fog, from which the villagers’ torches burst forth like signal fires. Yet the real danger here - contrary to what the title might suggest - does not come from the elephants but from a society that reveres the Kinnar as sacred and yet denies them any self-determined life.

“Elephants in the Fog” is a film about the contradictions of belonging: about a chosen family that offers protection but at the same time costs freedom.