Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids (2005) on Netflix

Two documentary filmmakers chronicle their time in Sonagchi, Calcutta and the relationships they developed with children of prostitutes who work the city's notorious red light district.

Documentary photographer Zana Briski journeyed into Calcutta's underworld to photograph the city's prostitutes. In return, she offered to teach the prostitutes' children the basics of photography so that the kids could document their own lives on the streets of one of the world's poorest cities. The resulting photographs, often astonishing, were exhibited around the world; many of them are seen in this film, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2005.

—Jwelch5742

Poverty, underdevelopment, abuse, red lights, and prostitution in Kolkata, the capital of India's West Bengal state. To document the unfulfilled dreams of the prostitutes' offspring, and the addiction to daily brutality, filmmakers, Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, ventured into Kolkata's red-light district, not shying away from capturing the unfavourable conditions of the bustling microcosm. Through the art of photography, the British photographer, Zana Briski, inspired new hope, assigning Kolkata's red light kids the task of sending a powerful message to the world with their cameras.

—Nick Riganas

Amidst the apparent growing prosperity of India, there is a dark underbelly of poverty of another side of the nation that is little known. This film is a chronicle of filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's efforts to show that world of Calcutta's red light district. To do that, they inspired a special group of children of the prostitutes of the area to photograph the most reluctant subjects of it. As the kids excel in their new found art, the filmmakers struggle to help them have a chance for a better life away from the miserable poverty that threatens to crush their dreams.

—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)