‘Elephants in the Fog’ selected as Nepal’s Oscar entry

Cannes Jury Prize-winning Nepali feature Elephants in the Fog (Tiniharu) has been selected as Nepal’s official entry for the 99th Academy Awards, scheduled for 2027.

The Academy’s International Feature Film Selection Committee in Kathmandu announced the decision on Sunday, following an evaluation of two films submitted for consideration: Elephants in the Fog and Gaunthali.

The committee said it made the selection after assessing the two films on their technical aspects, storytelling, emotional treatment of characters and artistic craft.

The film, directed by Abinash Bikram Shah, is his first feature-length directorial work. Shah also co-wrote the screenplay with Sandeep Badal. The film stars Pushpa Thing Lama, Deepika Yadav, Jasmin Bishwokarma and Aliz Ghimire, alongside established Nepali actors including Gauri Malla, Maotse Gurung, Aashant Sharma and Akanchha Karki.

The film centres on Pirati (played by Pushpa), the matriarch of a Kinnar community living in a village surrounded by forests inhabited by wild elephants. When one of her daughters disappears, Pirati is forced to investigate while confronting the tension between her personal desire and responsibility towards her community.

Filmed in the country’s southern plains—particularly Thori and Birgunj, it explores questions of family, belonging, marginalisation and social exclusion through the story of a community living on the margins of mainstream society.

Earlier this year, Elephants in the Fog became the first Nepali feature film selected for the official programme of the Cannes Film Festival. Competing in the Un Certain Regard section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, it won the Jury Prize. In 2022, Shah’s short film Lori received a Jury Special Mention at Cannes.

The film also received a Best Sound Creation award associated with the Un Certain Regard selection, and French cinematographer Noé Bach shot it. Frédéric Alvarez composed the music, with editing by Andrew Bird and Paris J. Ludwig. The film is an international co-production involving companies from Nepal, France, Germany, Brazil and Norway.

Nepal’s Oscar journey

Nepal has submitted films to the Academy’s international feature film category since 1999, when Eric Valli’s Himalaya became the country’s first submission.

Himalaya remains the only Nepali submission to have received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 72nd Academy Awards in 2000, making Nepal one of the five countries represented in the category that year. It ultimately lost the award to Pedro Almodóvar’s Spanish-language All About My Mother. 

The Academy’s ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ category was renamed to ‘Best International Feature Film’ in 2020. Nepal has submitted films intermittently since Caravan, with entries including Mask of Desire (Mukundo), Muna Madan, Kagbeni, Highway, White Sun, Bulbul, Aama, Lori and Shambhala.

Shah himself has previously been involved in Nepal’s Oscar campaigns as a screenwriter. He co-wrote Min Bahadur Bham’s The Black Hen (Kalo Pothi), which was selected as Nepal’s entry for the 89th Academy Awards, and Bham’s Shambhala, the submission for the 97th Academy Awards.

Nepal submitted Milan Chams’s biographical sports feature Anjila for the 98th Academy Awards last year. 

The 99th Academy Awards are scheduled for March 2027, with the international feature film category to go through the Academy’s subsequent selection process before the final nominees are announced.