One of the many big triumphs for South Asian cinema at the Cannes Film Festival was Abinash Bikram Shah earning a Special Mention for his film Lori (Melancholy of my Mother’s Lullabies, Nepal) in the Short Film Competition (official selection). The other wins, of course, are Saim Sadiq’s Joyland (Pakistan) winning the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard and the Queer Palm Prize; and Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes (Special Screenings) winning the L’Oeil d’Or (Golden Eye) for Best Documentary at Cannes. I’ve written extensively about Sadiq’s and Sen’s films before, so I will focus on Lori here. Shah’s is a massive achievement for the relatively small, struggling Nepali film industry, dominated by Bollywood, Hollywood and Indian cinema (KGF, RRR).

The general Indian public is usually appallingly ignorant about Nepali cinema—or any South Asian cinema in our neighbourhood, for several reasons. In fact, Abinash Bikram Shah is definitely one of the brighter voices in the Nepali film industry, along with Deepak Rauniyar, Min Bahadur Bham, Tsering Rhitar Sherpa and others, whose films have been on the A-list film festival circuit—Cannes, Berlin, Venice and more. He has an impressive, award-winning body of work as writer, director and producer. His previous work as writer for feature films includes Deepak Rauniyar’s Highway (Berlin Film Festival, 2012) and Min Bahadur Bham’s Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen, Venice Film Festival, 2016), which was also Nepal’s official Oscar entry. He has written and directed several shorts, including Ma Khushi Chu (I am Happy) and Tattini (The Moon is Bright Tonight), as well as written popular TV series, such as Singha Durbar, on a Nepali woman prime minister. Disclaimer: I was also on the Hubert Bals Fund Script and Project Development Selection Committee of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, that selected Shah’s new script Elephants in the Fog, among others, in 2021.