TIFF 51: Full of sorrow and fury, “Elephants in the Fog” is a queer gem from Nepal

by Cláudio Alves It starts at night, opening credits fading in and out over an abstract blackness that slowly gives way to something more discernible. Strange sounds seep from the dark, a cry that might be animal or human song. Gradually, it becomes some ritualistic beckoning for an elephant, somewhere in the forest. “Come to me,” a voice shouts into the nothing; lights slash across the empty screen, and a search party begins to make itself known in the frame. Such an opening could insinuate a film enmeshed in ancient mysteries to the point of alienation, removed from modernity and led by tradition into a magical place where the concerns of so-called “real life” matter little before the demands of ancient rite, folklore, and myth. But then it cuts to morning, and Elephants in the Fog suggests a narrative, thematic, and cinematic space that not only avoids these assumed extremes but also refutes the traditional vs modern binary this review’s first paragraph might have suggested. In the…