Sraiyanti Haricharan’s documentary follows the faces of Veera Pengal Munnetra Sangam, India’s first union for women drivers, and captures their labour, humour, kinship, and fight for gender-inclusive mobility
The sea wind at Pattinapakkam Beach in Chennai offers an unusual kind of hush for the city’s usual cacophony. Two women — khaki-shirted, weathered by roads — sit together on the shore as the sun sets; the wind blows above and below. They share fresh fried fish (king mackerel, anchovies), banter, laughter, and reflections on life. This fleeting escape belongs to the protagonists of Auto Queens, a short documentary directed by Sraiyanti Haricharan, which chronicles the lives of female auto-rickshaw drivers in Chennai. It recently premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). For these women, the road is a space of claim, of belonging, a frontier they intend to carve out together.
Chennai is still believed to run on male drivers, but it’s slowly changing. In April 2024, a group of women auto-rickshaw drivers formally registered India’s first union for women drivers: Veera Pengal Munnetra Sangam (VPMS). The founding members include Mohana Sundari (commonly Mohana), now president of VPMS, and Leela Rani, the union’s treasurer. What began as a modest WhatsApp group — six women sharing tips about routes, fares, school-drop rides, and station pickups — slowly blossomed into a 400-member-strong collective in just over a year.
Sisters of the road
Many of these women come from vulnerable backgrounds: some had lost their livelihoods during the pandemic, others bore the responsibility of single parenthood. In Mohana’s case, she had tried her hand at small businesses — a tiffin centre, a fast-food stall, even a beauty parlour — before turning to the auto license for survival. VPMS is a safety net. Members contribute a small subscription; in return they receive access to low-interest loans (Rs 10,000 to start — later rising to Rs 50,000), accident and death insurance cover, and modest financial support in times of illness or crisis.
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But as many members point out, the true benefit lies not only in money but dignity, in claiming a space on Chennai’s notoriously male-dominated roads. Auto Queens doesn’t treat its protagonists as victims, but insists on their full humanity, with all the contradictions, emotions, and rhythms that -daily life in a metropolis entail. The film trails Mohana’s determination alongside Leela’s fiery resistance. Mohana is reflective, at times almost meditative; Leela, in her own words, is armour-wearing, ready to fight. The contrast between them is sharp, but their commitment is shared: to redefine public space through their agency.
Scenes oscillate between jarring drone shots of traffic, city crowds, and the claustrophobia of auto-rickshaw interiors to intimate, warm frames within union meetings, homes, or the modest beach picnic where our feature opened. We see them booking school-drop trips, arguing with male drivers who claim “auto-stands” as their territory, facing gawking passengers, navigating taxis and towers of red-tape with stubborn patience.
But interwoven are gestures of joy: two women listening to songs, sharing jokes, planning TikTok videos, or simply recounting their day over battered cups of tea. Their bond is expressed not just through activism, but also through daily trials and triumphs, camaraderie and companionship. We see them catching their breath or joking about daily irritations. On any given day, a woman auto driver must defend her right to stand at a queue, demand fair fares without being laughed at, and operate in spaces designed without her gender in mind. The infrastructure of the city — toilets, night stops, parking lots — presumes a male workforce.
Personal and political
What emerges is not a story about individual courage but a collective recalibration of public norms: women insisting that the roads must adjust to their presence, not the other way around. The connection between the two drivers is unguarded, unembellished: two women who have learned each other’s rhythms so well that even silence between them feels full. It is this intimacy that powers the collective. The film posits that solidarity begins not with ideology but with sharing space, sharing fatigue, sharing small victories. It is an argument that systemic change is built first on relationships.
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Director Sraiyanti, a cinematographer trained at Bournemouth University, carries her own history of operating in male-dominated environments. Having worked on projects like Gargi and The Feast, she is one of the few women cinematographers on many sets she joins. Her earlier short, Tambram Cooking, examined Tamil Brahmin identity through food; in Auto Queens, she shifts to the intersections of caste, class, and gender in Chennai’s labour economy. What remains constant is her interest in the lived experiences of people.
IDFA’s selection of Auto Queens marks a big moment for Tamil documentary filmmaking, which rarely finds space at major international festivals. The screening offers global visibility to women who have long struggled for recognition in their own city. A global festival premiere should mean that the argument for gender-inclusive mobility is no longer confined to Chennai’s municipal corridors. In a short time, VPMS has developed digital and financial literacy programmes, supported by foundations like Empowering Communities Through Education (ECTE), an organization with a mission to create a resource centre in Chennai for lifelong learning and civic engagement, and Storiculture.
The collective’s long-term vision includes expanding women’s participation across gig-economy roles and advocating for citywide infrastructure changes that recognise women workers’ needs. So far, more than 100 women have undergone training, building confidence to handle documentation, loans, subsidies, and digital platforms. What Auto Queens ultimately demonstrates is that mobility is about recognition, safety, economic agency, and the right to occupy public space without negotiation. Mohana and Leela, in all their differences, show that a movement does not need unanimity, it needs the audacity to claim space that was always theirs to begin with.
