Noé Bach, AFC, discusses his photographic work on "Elephants in the Fog", by Abinash Bikram Shah

In a Nepalese village nestled in the heart of a forest inhabited by wild elephants lives a Kinnar community, as revered as it is feared for its powers to bestow blessings and curses. Pirati, one of the community’s mothers, dreams of escaping with the man she loves. But when one of her daughters goes missing, she must investigate and choose between her desire for freedom and her responsibilities.
With Pushpa Thing Lama, Deepika Yadav, Jasmin Bishwokarma.

The film offers a rare insight into a transgender community in the heart of rural Nepal. When you read the script, what came to your mind ?

Noé Bach : I was completly unaware of these communities, with their hierarchical system of mothers and daughters, like a family organised by religious authority. And above all, the unique place they occupy in Nepalese society. At the heart of the film lies the question of the integration of transgender people into a society that is, on the face of it, rather traditional and patriarchal. The film begins with an apparent harmony between the kinnar family and the villagers, but we gradually realise that this only works if the kinnars remain strictly in the place assigned to them, without causing a stir.

It’s also the recreation of a very simple world, with the village, the forest… there’s a mysterious, almost fantastical aspect to it.

NB : Director Abinash had a precise geographical vision of the village in mind : the community house on the edge of the forest, both integrated into the village yet at the same time set slightly apart. He had drawn a map of the location. So much so that during the preparatory research, the question of building this house from scratch arose. In the end, we managed to find this existing natural setting, in this village, right on the edge of the forest.
Discovering the world of the Kinnars was also the challenge at the start of the film. We had to convey the rules governing the life of this community, the bonds uniting the characters, whilst quickly drawing the audience into their world through scenes of everyday life. The risk with the ceremonial scenes, which help explain the Kinnar system, was that they might keep us at a distance from their emotions at the start of the film.

What were your key decisions, and the challenges regarding the visuals ?

NB : Very early on in the project’s preparation, I suggested shooting the whole story with two cameras. It’s not very common for a first feature, but with non professional cast, I was convinced it would give us the best possible chance of success. Also, quite early on, Abinash and I discussed the photographic work of Nan Goldin or Mary-Ellen Mark (notably the Falkland Road series). Very raw images with that accidental, found quality—not completely finished or sophisticated. And I felt that this fitted perfectly with the simultaneous use of two cameras, where the second camera acts somewhat as an unexpected counterpoint to the planned and carefully considered shot sequence... Something less composed, more surprising, and perhaps more real appears. We hide the cameraman wherever possible, and this sometimes (often !) creates angles of view that are more interesting than what we had planed . Even in terms of lighting, the angle set up for A Camera can turn out to be more distinctive when viewed from the side with B Camera.

Fortunately, this proposal for two cameras was very quickly accepted by the production team, who also saw it as an opportunity to gather as much footage as possible for the edit. And not to be constrained by a staging or a rhythm that was too contrived or too structured... I asked Cyrille Hubert to join me on this film, and his contribution was invaluable. As filming ran behind schedule (the camera was held up at customs, there were unforeseen issues with the sets, the elephants, etc.), Cyrille even completed the shoot as director of photography, with great success.

There is also the clash between modernity and tradition...

NB : Modernity was the other key theme of the film for me. In this very rural setting, centred on ceremonies, costumes and traditional sets, how could we ground the film in the present and convey its modernity and relevance ? We wanted to avoid the postcard image of Nepal. For example, we worked with production designer Mausam Aggarwal to use LED lights wherever possible, incorporating a wide variety of small, high-quality light sources, coloured lamps, fairy lights, and so on. While choosing the locations , we opted for more modern, raw concrete settings, which are often homes built by members of the affluent Nepalese diaspora. As for the costumes, we mixed traditional attire with hoodies, trainers, and so on.
We were keen to show just how much this community’s life revolves around social media, particularly TikTok. So we shot numerous TikTok videos to bring this aspect of their lives to life. It features less prominently in the final cut than we’d imagined, but it’s still there.

How did you shoot the film ?

NB : The film was shot over 38 days, with fairly long days, six days a week. Yhat was a concession for the European crew, as the Nepalese are used to shooting films seven days a week (the local electricians were grumbling because they were bored on Sundays !). And as with any production, there were plenty of unforeseen events...
It’s a very intense pace, because physically we don’t have time to deal with the unexpected at the end of the day or at the weekend. For that reason too, I was lucky to have Cyrille with me ! Sometimes I’d ask him to go and scout a location we’d lost track of, or to plan a technical setup in advance...
Moreover, Abinash has a horizontal, collaborative approach to working with others. He chooses his collaborators carefully and really trusts them, and enjoys thinking collectively. This sets a different pace on set to what I’m used to.

You can’t say the film is entirely documentary. On the contrary, some very composed camera movements make an appearance in certain scenes...

NB : In terms of visual grammar, we didn’t want to impose any rules on ourselves. We didn’t want to make a film with a fixed framework, with a systematic stylistic approach to the imagery. Although we spent a lot of time on the storyboard during pre-production, we also wanted to remain responsive to what these women were offering us. We’d set ourselves a few broad guidelines, such as filming a bit more handheld inside the house for the everyday scenes—the joyful chaos of that home, just like in any family—in contrast to the more composed, framed shots at Guru Mata’s, the community’s matriarch. But we used every technique, with no bias—handheld, tripod, tracking shots, the Ronin. In the second part,the film moves towards a more fictional form. I think this is a natural progression of the script, as it begins as a fairly everyday chronicle and gradually shifts towards a detective film, a thriller, and even a touch of the fantastical, right at the very end.

The mist is almost a character in its own right. It sometimes blankets the forest, gradually drawing the film into the realm of the fantastical...

NB : Exactly, a character and a mystical embodiment of the forest, the animals, and so on. During pre-production, we spent a great deal of time discussing this mist and the possibility of recreating it artificially, on set with SFX and digitally with VFX. Although the film was shot at the time of year when there’s normally the most fog, we had to plan for alternatives in case there wasn’t any. I’d already worked on a previous film where fog was a key element (Animalia, by Sofia Alaoui), and I’d realised just how much equipment is needed on location to make it work. You need very powerful machines, "hoses" (large tubes with numerous holes) that disperse the fog and distribute it evenly enough. Except that this equipment doesn’t exist in Nepal ; it has to be brought in from India and is extremely expensive. As for VFXs, my experience was that they could only work with a real-life basis ; that the mist could be extended and accentuated as a special effect, but not recreated from scratch.
So we aimed for… the real thing. As most of the film was shot on location in the village and its surroundings, and the actresses were always with us, we set ourselves up to be as responsive and flexible as possible regarding the foggy days, seizing the opportunity when it arose, even if it meant disrupting the shooting schedule a little. Only one sequence was handled with VFX, but everything else is natural.

We must also mention the final sequence, with the elephants, which is very important to the story...

NB : This sequence was one of the film’s biggest challenges. To shoot it, we had to relocate filming to a more touristy area, about an eight-hour drive from the village that was our main location, so we could make use of around fifteen trained elephants—which we obviously couldn’t bring to us ! Everything had been prepared so that we could shoot it exactly as it was written, at night, in the forest. But a few days before filming this scene was due to begin, members of the nature reserve told us that a wild, potentially dangerous elephant named Ronaldo had been spotted in the forest where we wanted to shoot, and the elephant, of course, took priority over us. So we changed forests, but this new forest was wilder, and filming at night exposed us to attacks by animals, particularly tigers. We would have had to call in the army to protect the crew. Faced with this situation, we switched the sequence to a "day for night scene", which is actually one of the effects requiring the most careful and precise preparation, in terms of the sun’s position, costumes, etc.
During colour grading, we finally decided that dawn would break quite quickly in this sequence, as if time were passing differently in this forest. And in the end, it’s quite beautiful, with Pirati’s emotional arc and the sudden appearance of the elephants. The night-time reverse shot of our characters’ house, filmed 500km away right at the very end of shooting, was therefore also converted to dawn, thanks to the support of VFX.

So quite a few surprises in this film ?

NB : On set, I definetly love surprises. I find that’s where we reinvent ourselves, where we find new ideas, by letting reality catch us off guard. Sometimes we have a whole plan, we’ve imagined shots and we’re sure the scene must convey a certain thing. And then we look... and it’s something completely different. It’s the film that speaks, and we have to listen to it.

(Interview conducted by François Reumont for the AFC)

Elephants in the Fog
Production : Les Valseurs
Director : Abinash Bikram Shah
Director of Photography : Noé Bach, AFC
Production Designer : Mausam Aggarwal
Sound : Pedro Sa Earp
Editing : Andrew Bird & Paris J Ludwig