Betsy F*cking Ross
2024 · 14m
Directed by Kayla Baken
Genres: biography, drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative, tender
An upholsterer's apprentice in Revolutionary-era Philadelphia marries against her strict Quaker parents' wishes and dreams of her own shop. As war pulls her marriage and her trade onto an unpredictable path, she becomes the woman who will sew the first American flag.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the Betsy Ross hagiography to be straight-faced Americana, so Baken gets points for the provocation—but the film plays it pretty earnest in the end, letting the historical inevitability swallow the actual transgression of a woman choosing her own path over her family's doctrine.
Baken situates this within a long tradition of women's biographical drama while resisting the triumphalist impulse; the formal restraint—tender and contemplative rather than declarative—allows the apprenticeship, the marriage, the flag to exist in genuine tension, the way a proper period piece should.
The decision to keep the camera close on her hands—measuring cloth, stitching, the muscle memory of the trade—makes every political choice feel earned rather than imposed; it's the specificity of craft that transforms what could be a civics lesson into something intimate and real.