Film Review: Born into Brothels (dir. Z. Briski & R. Kauffman, 2004)

This is one of those "kick in the gut" films that make you appreciate how bleak the world really is. If the title of the film isn't enough for you, it's a documentary about children born into (and still living in) brothels in the "red light district" of Calcutta. Not to make an obvious point, but these kids live lives of unimaginable (to me, at least, in my pampered existence) deprivation and squalor. The girls are almost certainly doomed to go "into the line," the term used over and over again in the film for prostitution. The boys will probably end up as drug addicts, like the father of one of the boys we see here.

The documentary filmmaker (or one of them) is a British woman (director Zana Briski), a photographer who has been living around and photographing the brothels in Calcutta for years; in doing so, she developed an interest in these children. This interest takes two forms. One, she provides them with cameras and teaches them photography; the children take some amazing pictures of their lives and environs. Two, she makes a great effort to get the children in her photography group enrolled in boarding schools. At the end of the film, we see that two of the six or seven kids is still in school; the others have left, or never gone, for various reasons. But the real sad thing: these are kids, just like any other kids. But kids without much of a chance.

This is an incredibly moving film, but don't watch it if you don't want to be depressed afterward. It will leave you asking: What percentage of the people in the world live in a state similar to this?