Born Into The Brothel

A marvelous documentary by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski is the winner of the 77th annual Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It is a portrait of children of Red light district of Calcutta where their mothers work as prostitute. Zana, a photographer from New York spends her time with these children by providing them cameras to capture the hues of this world through their own eyes.
There is a group of few children of age less than fifteen. Zana talks to them and makes a great fun with photography. As she spends more and more time with these children, she feels herself very close to them. She decides to do something and starts working on their schooling. Somehow she gets an initial success in convincing parents but the main problem arises in finding a good school. She talks few of them in the city but due to the background of children, they all simply refuse to take them. Finally she talks with social organizations and foundations. With her strenuous efforts, few of those children get into the schools.
The main theme revolves around the children and their lives in brothel. Many of them have the ambitions to study but due to filthy environment and poor financial conditions, all their dreams have been shattering. They have accepted the cruel reality of life. Their worlds have been shrunk around the brothel itself. Zana shows them a ray of hope with a camera. That camera changes many things in their lives. They see a complete new world with the help of this device. These are the pictures taken by them which reflect their ideas and farsightedness.
I liked this documentary, not because of its overall rating but the softness that was untouched so far. There were many incidents when tears rolled down my cheeks. I have not been able to resist my self to think again and again since then.
There will be many such children who will not be able to live a good life. Is it their destiny that they were born into such places while I born into a well civilized, educated family? I have been getting a good education, a respectable social life. What are their faults???
Only their fates led them to hell while mine to a so called ‘heaven’. Why ???????