This Oscar-winning film directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman follows children growing up in Calcutta’s red light district as they learn how to document their lives with cameras.

A.O. Scott wrote in his New York Times review:

Born Into Brothels tempers its optimism with realism in a way that is both uplifting and heartbreaking. Like Jonathan Kozol’s books about young people in American cities, it takes an almost naïve delight in the pluck and intelligence that blossom in middle childhood, while exposing the cruelty of social arrangements that allow those qualities to be squandered. No film can dispel that cruelty, but in giving a handful of children the opportunity to regard themselves as artists and to perceive their surroundings as raw material, Ms. Briski snatches a measure of hope from depressing circumstances.