DocNomads film premieres in Sheffield, UK
Iqran Rasheed’s Red Elephant will have its World Premiere in the International Short Film competition of the 33rd SheffieldDoc Fest held from 10 to 15 of June.
By Iqran Rasheed (Pakistan) • 22’ • 2026
For people who have hidden their queerness their whole lives just to survive, the asylum process demands the opposite: total openness, total detail, to complete strangers. Red Elephant follows those caught in this cruel contradiction, many of whom have fled deeply conservative, homophobic societies only to encounter a system that requires them to narrate their most painful experiences as evidence. The film gets close to the reality of what this process feels like; the waiting, the vulnerability, the absurdity of turning personal identity into a bureaucratic checkbox. Red Elephant is a powerful story about what gets lost when the price of safety is exposing the very thing you were taught to hide.
In Sheffield catalogue
