By the time the ‘happy hour’ sizzled down, I had talked to a dozen filmmakers from all over the world who were hoping to get their films onto the main stages of the upcoming Berlinale, TIFF, and Venice Film Festivals. Mithun, by that time, had unofficially confirmed that he had found a willing distributor. If that is true, Cannes served as the first proper documentation of this promising film.

“Elephants in the Fog” serves as a testament to how Nepal’s legal fight has historically leaned toward a broader human rights framework, granting an "others" category on citizenship documents based on self-identification.

And somewhere inside the maze of the Palais, among buyers, critics and dreamers, Dhaka continues to echo a little louder.

But what hit like a sledgehammer was Irish screenwriter Paul Laverty breaking the festival bubble to slam the "blacklisting" of actors for their political stances—particularly regarding the bombing of women and children in Gaza—even if he did not explicitly name the conflict in every sentence. “Shame on those who bomb women and children. Shame on those who blacklist actors like Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo for speaking up against their misdeeds.”