The Bleeding Tides
Ipshita Bhattacharyya

“Over the years, I have travelled to Sundarbans on several filming assignments and through each of my visits, I have been drawn not only to the landscape but also to the quiet resilience of the women who live there,” Ipshita Bhattacharyya tells us. “We hear a lot about climate change impacts – rising sea levels, frequent cyclones and floods, increasing salinity – but few speak about how it invades the most intimate spaces of life. It was in my conversations with the women there, that I started to witness the deep connection between environmental degradation and women’s health. The stories we found were tender, raw, and urgent and yet, rarely heard. The Bleeding Tides was created from a desire to amplify these voices and make visible what so often goes unseen. My filming process was collaborative and it formed organically as the women embraced me into their daily lives. Many of the women featured in the film shared experiences of vulnerability and stigma, which we had to frame with care and rather than focussing on creating victims, we tried to highlight both struggle and strength. Cinematically, we were guided by the landscape and its own pace. The intention was to create a film that truly resonates their voices and not mine. With The Bleeding Tides, I hope to broaden the discourse on climate justice and create a deeper understanding of how truly intertwined our ecosystems are with our social systems. The climate is indeed in our bodies.”

The Bleeding Tides highlights the entwined crises of climate change and women’s health in the Sundarbans, the cyclone capital of India. Rising salinity, driven by sea-level rise and repeated storm surges, has profound but often overlooked effects on menstrual and reproductive health. Women face growing risks due to unsafe water (which many must spend hours each day in), inadequate sanitation, limited healthcare, and shrinking livelihood options. The film shows how these combined pressures have produced a public health crisis, with climate impacts directly affecting women’s health, work, and daily survival. The film definitively states menstrual health is not a private burden but a public health concern; ensuring gender-responsive adaptation to climate change is crucial.