During a panel discussion during Black Movie, filmmaker Vivek Chaudhary spoke at length about the origins and evolution of his documentary “I, Poppy”, a film that begins with a deeply personal memory from his childhood in Rajasthan and expands into a complex exploration of tradition, corruption, caste, gender, and resistance within contemporary India.
Chaudhary explained that the seed of “I, Poppy” lies in his early memories of watching elders in his village consume what appeared to be a brown tea during ceremonies of birth, marriage, and death. Only in his late teens did he realize this was opium. In his community, serving opium is not an aberration but an expectation; refusing to do so at a wedding, for example, would be socially unacceptable. This cultural proximity to the poppy plant sparked his curiosity about a substance that, in urban India or the West, immediately triggers associations with crime and addiction, yet in his village is part of the social fabric.
For Chaudhary, the poppy plant became a metaphor for human nature. Approached with care and reverence, it produces morphine, one of the most important pain relief medicines known to humanity. Approached with greed and control, it produces heroin and destruction. This duality pushed him to ask deeper questions: where does the opium come from, who grows it, and how does it reach a desert village far from any poppy fields?
His research, which began in 2017, uncovered a complex value chain involving farmers, narcotics officials, mafias, addicts, and patients in need of morphine. He discovered that while India legally grows opium for medicinal purposes under UN oversight, only about 1% of those who require morphine for pain relief actually have access to it. Meanwhile, farmers are trapped in exploitative systems that resemble bonded labor, and illegal diversion feeds heroin addiction. What initially seemed like an investigative exposé gradually evolved into something more personal and universal.
Chaudhary recounted how a dangerous encounter in the fields, where he and his crew were attacked by frightened farmers and forced to surrender a memory card, unexpectedly led him to the family that would become the emotional core of “I, Poppy”. Spending a night in the home of a farmer-activist and his mother, he witnessed a domestic argument about activism and safety that mirrored conversations from his own life. The mother’s plea for her son to stop fighting the system, not because he was wrong but because resistance felt futile, reframed the film for Chaudhary. What had started as an exposé became a story about resistance, generational conflict, and the emotional toll of challenging entrenched structures.
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Throughout the panel, Chaudhary emphasized how the film captures what it feels like to “breathe corruption” and “breathe oppression,” moving beyond statistics into lived experience. He described his transition from being primarily an activist to becoming what he calls a “filmmaker-activist,” someone who believes that storytelling can reach people in ways data and slogans cannot.
The discussion also touched on the layered social dynamics visible in the film. Caste plays a central role, with the family portrayed belonging to a lower caste, which significantly limits their opportunities and social mobility. Gender dynamics are equally present. Women in the household, including the activist’s wife and daughters-in-law, remain largely invisible due to conservative norms that prevent them from appearing unveiled before male strangers. Even after years of familiarity, Chaudhary noted, some women in the house could not show their faces on camera.
This invisibility is not incidental but systemic. In Rajasthan, Chaudhary explained, girls are often married off before adulthood, limiting their education and public presence. He pointed out that India’s deeply ingrained caste hierarchies continue to shape social interactions even in urban and global contexts, citing studies showing caste discrimination persisting among Indian executives in Silicon Valley.
The ostracism faced by the central family in “I, Poppy” is also significant. By challenging a system that many farmers benefit from, they are gradually isolated by their own community. The mother, who spent decades building a stable household, now faces both financial and social consequences due to her son’s activism.
Looking ahead, Chaudhary revealed plans to screen the film across Indian villages, particularly among farming communities, to spark dialogue about solidarity and alternative possibilities. Urban audiences, he noted, are often unaware that India legally cultivates opium for medicinal use, let alone the corruption surrounding it. Internationally, he hopes the film raises questions about accountability in the global morphine supply chain.
At the same time, Chaudhary acknowledged the risks involved. During production, he faced pressure from authorities, threats, and funding obstacles. He stressed that while a film cannot change a system on its own, it can pass the baton to activists, lawyers, and civil society by keeping stories alive and visible.
In “I, Poppy”, Vivek Chaudhary presents a documentary that is at once personal, political, and philosophical, using a single plant as a lens to examine how deeply rooted systems of control, tradition, and inequality continue to shape lives in modern India.
