Review: Flying Taxi (2025)

In the short Flying Taxi, by Sreemoyee Singh, fantasy does not as much intrude upon reality as hover gently above it, casting long fragrant shadows of dream versus reality. The female protagonist is a middle-aged woman, whose presence in the narrative suggests a bridge between realism and daydreaming. She is waiting for a taxi. It is not just an ordinary taxi, but a self-driving yellow cab that arrives every Sunday. Inside is a prince who smells of jasmine—her lover—who takes her to various romantic destinations.

Now, this premise could have easily dived into an exercise of self-indulgence. But Singh, like a good magician, keeps the illusion grounded with emotional precision and deftness. After all, we begin with the ostensibly banal urban encounter between two strangers on a roadside, which is a shared waiting space. In her capable hands, this tale of dream and fantasy shifts into a wry and wistful reflection on memory, yearning, and the quietly radical imagination of women who dare to refuse the tyranny of the literal. 

What attracts our interest in this dreamlike short film isn’t the story's absurdity but how believable everything begins to feel. The justifications the woman uses to reflect on her Sundays with the prince are thick in all the specificity of experience: sweets they eat together, the feeling of his hand, the matinee shows of alternate versions of Ray’s Jalsaghar. The entire edifice of fantasy and pleasant memories of bygone days is presented not merely as nostalgia, but as a subtle indictment of a world that is becoming increasingly allergic to wonder. On the one hand, it is about the architecture of urban loneliness: two individuals from different generations meet on the street. The lady here believes in her flight of imagination and fantasy, while the young boy is long-autonomized from the present to take the vehicle of imagination. Memory and fantasy are fuel to serve the story about a woman whose desires may have long been canceled, invalidated or anesthetized. 

Shot on OnePlus 13 in Dolby Vision, visually the film is spare, allowing the words to do their work. Ratna Pathak Shah and Shadab Kamal's performances achieve the remarkable balance of being both lively and vibrantly engaging. Shah’s rhythm bears the charm of a woman who believes in the power of imagination and dreams. Kamal's doubtful and curious attitude functions as a fully formed character rather than just as a stand-in for the viewer. Both characters are living in the space between rational disbelief and unintended enchantment.

Flying Taxi isn’t really about believing whether taxis could fly or not. It is about the places we let other people dream, and the moments we may even catch ourselves dreaming in turn. In its tight running time of around eight minutes, Singh demonstrates an impeccable class in tonal control, balancing irony and sincerity. We might not see the taxi if we look up, as the woman suggests, but we might just note how infrequently we’ve looked up at all.

The short film is available on YouTube.