Suguna, all of 22 years, is just a speck in the truckloads of sugarcane cutters being transported to Beed as the cutting season of six months begins in October. Her father has already run up a debt of thousands of rupees the previous year and he is now forced to work for  free to repay the debt. Suguna has her first experience of cutting sugarcane and is determined to increase the output each day, so as to earn enough to compensate for her father’s labour. It is during one of these days that Suguna discovers a harsh truth. She is absent for a period of three days to accommodate her menstrual cycle when she learns  to her great shock that she has lost a sizable amount of salary for the absence and has to further compensate the sugar contractor by paying a fine. Then the truth of the region hits her…women here are  forced to undergo hysterectomy[removal of the uterus] so that work is not hampered even for an hour. As she battles this dilemma, she is faced with the ugly truth…lose her womb and womanhood forever or resign to a life of poverty and debts.

Suguna looks to the social activist Goyal for advice and though he asks her to protest against the inhumane norm, the sugar contractor offers to pay her an advance to conduct the operation.

BITTER SWEET  follows the heart-rending travails of Suguna and her fellow women cutters who are trapped in a situation that they can neither avoid nor escape.

Directed by Ananth Narayan Mahadevan
Marathi, 101 minutes, 2020, India