Rajaditya Banerjee's upcoming documentary, Cracking The Glass Ceiling, in collaboration with Insomnia and Backbenchers, is to be released soon. With a motive to encourage all those socially excluded people of our society to come forward and express themselves by breaking through the glass ceiling, Banerjee presents the story of three intrepid saxophonists who challenges patriarchal social norms in the remote Bengali villages of Trilok Chandrapur and West Burdwan. To witness housewives and daughters holding and playing instruments like Saxophone professionally in a village is somewhat surreal.
The term 'glass ceiling' here, refers to societal barriers. Three young village women in the West Bardhaman district of Bengal picked up Saxophone to provide for their families during the pandemic days of Covid-19. How they actually broke the 'glass ceiling' of the society to achieve their goals is truly inspiring.
The documentary's main highlight as already said, are three fearless women, 11-year-old Sangita Badyokor, and her two maternal aunts Priya and Chumki. Chumki and Priya, have been married for almost ten years, and were already accustomed to saxophone melodies, which made learning the instrument a little easier. During the Covid crisis, Sangita came to live with her grandparents and joined her maternal aunts, in learning the saxophone. With their family supporting them in this courageous act, they remained undeterred despite some negative comments of people.
With interviews of all the main characters or supporting characters in the film, a lot of shocking insights into what goes on behind the scenes of their journey and struggles came to light. The documentary with an inspiring real-life tale will be showcased first at the grand film festivals of Austria, France and Germany, after which it will be shown at the Finland film festival. Banerjee says, "This was an enlightening experience to witness a group of women's lives for a few hours through this documentary. From covering sensitive issues of objectification of young women, workplace sexism, to gender-based violence, such documentaries can be a powerful tool to educate and encourage the society, thereby fostering progress, and this has almost all."