Bikash Subedi has completed principal photography for his Nepali feature film, Shirjara: Song of Grandmother. The production team has assembled an 80-minute rough cut of the movie.
Filming occurred at an altitude of approximately 4,000 metres in Dhorpatan, Nepal. Subedi stated, "My earliest memories are of sitting beside an old hearth in the high Himalayas, listening to my grandmother tell stories. She was around 90 years old, and those moments left a deep impression on me."
The director described the project as a personal journey from the motherboard back to the marrow. The film has a total budget of $296,000, with Kingdom Network having already raised and spent 85 per cent of those funds.
A 15 per cent funding gap remains to complete the project. Subedi noted, "I am not against technology. I am interested in what happens when we bring technology into a deeper conversation with our own history and humanity."
The production is currently at the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market to raise $44,000. This market operates as part of TIFFCOM, which is the content market for the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Subash Bhusal said, "But we believed the story was worth the effort." Bhusal added, "For us, supporting ‘Shirjara’ was an opportunity to back a filmmaker with a distinct perspective and to bring a deeply rooted Nepali story into a wider international conversation."
The team intends to secure Japanese partners as co-producers and for post-production work. Producers hope to sign a sales company for international rights and find distributors across Asia.
The film aims for a premiere at Cannes in 2027. Subedi is also developing a project regarding memory across time and ancient trans-Himalayan trade routes.
Kingdom Network has additional projects from Asia in development.
