Ipshita Bhattacharyya’s documentary short, From Fields to Flight, opens with a question: What happens when a woman decides she won’t accept the life her father and community have already planned for her? It’s a story about quiet defiance—about one woman’s determination to fly higher than anyone around her expected.
Babita grew up in a very traditional village in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. Babita is here to disrupt the gender norms. On this day, she is seen assembling a drone in the middle of a field, as she has been hired to film a wedding video. During the week, Babita is also hired to use the drone to spray fertilizer over farmland, and she makes good money doing it.
But she catches looks, since this isn’t something women do. This is men’s work. She talks about how she wasn’t allowed to own a cellphone. Everything changed with Preeti Didi’s arrival five years earlier. She showed up to organize self-help groups for women and talk openly about the gender bias baked into Indian culture. Under Didi’s mentorship, Babita can move toward independence. Now comes the matter of her arranged marriage, set up by her father.
Babita smiles in a quiet moment in From Fields to Flight.
“Everything changed with Preeti Didi’s arrival five years earlier. She showed up to organize self-help groups for women and talk openly about the gender bias baked into Indian culture.”
Ipshita Bhattacharyya’s From Fields to Flight is a profile in courage — an overused phrase, but a fitting one here. Bhattacharyya’s keen eye and storytelling sense are on full display. Babita is rightfully painted as a strong, independent woman who navigated her town’s well-entrenched culture to find freedom and self-determination.
We witness the difficulty she faces in being taken seriously, particularly by her father, who at times seems to be humoring her. The goal always seems to be just out of reach — in this case, formal drone training in the city.
Bhattacharyya packs a lot into just a few minutes, and From Fields to Flight shows that real courage is relentless. Babita’s fight to be taken seriously is what gives the film its staying power, even as the goal keeps slipping just out of reach.
For screening information, visit the From Fields to Flight official website.
"…She talks about how she wasn't allowed to own a cellphone."
