At the Cannes Film Festival beginning on May 12 in the French Riviera, Bhojpuri will be heard often during the screening of one of the films from the official selection. Elephants in the Fog, the film in Un Certain Regard section in Cannes, however, is not an Indian entry. It is, in fact, the first-ever Nepali feature film to be screened at the Cannes festival.
Directed by Abinash Bikram Shah, Elephants in the Fog is a Nepali-Bhojpuri film shot in a southern Nepali town bordering Bihar where the main language is Bhojpuri. Hindi feature film Homebound by Neeraj Ghaywan, which went on to become India’s official entry at the Oscar Awards this year, was part of the same Un Certain Regard section which celebrates fresh voices in world cinema last year.
“We shot the film in Parsa district bordering India,” says Anup Poudel of Kathmandu-based independent production house, Underground Talkies Nepal, one of the main producers of Elephants in the Fog. “Our aim is to tell stories, which are deeply rooted and authentic, from minorities and marginalised communities,” adds Poudel.
Elephants in the Fog tells the story of a group of transgender women responsible for patrolling wild elephants which are in conflict with a nearby human settlement. “In our society, where conservative ideologies can sometimes take over humanity and empathy, people who desire what our society forbids them to desire are often marginalised. They fail in society’s eyes, and are cast aside,” says the film’s debutant director Shah, whose short film Lori was part of the official selection of Cannes in 2022.
Diploma film shining
At the Cannes festival, to be held from May 12 to 23, there is no Indian feature film in the official selection. Instead, Indian cinema is represented by a lone diploma film from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. Punjabi short film Parchave Masseah Rataan De (Shadows of the Moonless Nights) by FTII student Mehar Malhotra is part of the Cannes festival’s La Cinef programme for film school productions around the world.
Ludhiana-born Malhotra’s diploma film in Punjabi language, which was shot in Pune in the middle of monsoon last year, is about Rajan, a 26-year-year warehouse packer who endures gruelling shifts and a volatile family life trying to reclaim a much-needed rest that always seems out of reach.
“I wanted to make the film because Rajan’s story felt like one we all carry but rarely name: the bone-deep fatigue of surviving a city that runs on sleeplessness,” says Malhotra, a 2020 batch student of directing and writing at FTII, Pune. “I approach Rajan not simply as a character, but as a vessel through which we explore the invisible wounds of contemporary India and the human spirit’s fragile endurance under pressure,” she adds. The FTII, Pune production is among 19 films selected from among 2,750 entries submitted by film schools around the world. Malhotra and seven other members of the cast and crew of the film will be attending the Cannes festival this year.