Director's statement:
This film comes from an intimate, personal place. I lost my grandmother, my Bajei, while I was away here in the US. The last time I saw her in my hometown in Nepal, dementia had already begun taking her. She'd ask who I was, and then, slowly, her memory would return. We'd talk, we'd laugh, and then she'd ask again — “Who are you?” It was heartbreaking in a way I still don't have full words for.
When she passed, I couldn't go home. I know the particular weight of a grief that has nowhere to land — one you carry alone, from a distance, through a screen, choppy phone calls.
Bajei found its shape in that weight. The cat becomes a doorway into it: an accident, a body Shailesh can't bring himself to abandon, and slowly, a way to perform the goodbye he was never able to give. His small, quiet rituals — washing, combing, mending — aren't really for the cat. They're for her.
This film is for anyone who has grieved from far away, and for every goodbye we never got to say.
Director Bio:
I’m a Nepali filmmaker based in the US. I developed my storytelling roots at Pixar (on Onward, Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2), BuzzFeed and the NY Times. My debut feature Six Feet was executive produced by Adam Somer (Monkey Man, Ghostbusters: Afterlife).
A graduate of USC School of Cinematic Arts and the recipient of the Frank Sinatra and Albert Broccoli Fellowships, I like blending genres in my stories. My films have screened at the Durban International Film Festival, Oscar-qualifying Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, and Amazon’s All Voices Film Festival, among others. My short Impulses surpassed 40,000 views on Omeleto and earned a Short of the Year shortlist from IndieShorts Magazine, while my earlier film My Claire was the subject of an Oxford University journal article on aging and memory. I was also named a "Filmmaker to Watch" by Cinephilia & Beyond.
I have also contributed in editorial to projects like Barbarian for 20th Century Fox, Locked (starring Anthony Hopkins and Bill Skarsgård) for Paramount, Detective Knight for Lionsgate, Arcadian (starring Nicolas Cage) for Shudder, and Hoarders tv series. I recently produced the Nepali-American feature The World's Happiest Man, starring two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern, and my latest co-produced short Private Property had its world premiere at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival.
