Movie Review: Born Into Brothels

I was lucky enough to watch Born Into Brothels in my Culture, Community and Enterprise tutorial.  It is one of those documentaries that is both sad and inspiring.  It is about a group of children in the red light district of Calcutta in India who learn the joy of photography and a woman who attempts to save them from being trapped in the industry.

Briski originally went to Calcutta to do some documentary photography and ended up becoming close with the children of the prostitutes that worked there.  She became rather attached to them and decided to teach them how to take photos, hoping to give them a better future.  The photos that they took were amazing and helped the children to gain confidence and also hope.

Briski helped to organise exhibitions for the children in order to raise money for them.  She worked with their families to try and get them into schools and away from the red light district.  However, a lot of them were refused places due to their past and some ended up returning to their families.

This movie was both saddening and inspiring.  I was sad to find out that this was still going on in the world; that women were born into prostitution and forced to continue on in their mothers footsteps.  I was inspired by the fact that this one person, Briski, was able to see this problem and raise enough money to get a lot of these children an education.  Not only that but this documentary sparked the creation of Kids With Destiny, which is aimed at providing an education and safe housing for children from the red light district.