Born Into Brothels
Director: Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 2.0
Hard to justify a review of this since I walked in fifteen minutes late (detours, traffic, you know how it is), but the fact that this shameless liberal-baiting won an Oscar for Best Documentary shows how the Academy can be so easily swayed by googly-eyed poor kids. The set-up is inherently sensationalistic - giving the children of whores in Calcutta cameras to photograph the squalor they live in - and the movie does indeed pander to its large-hearted and noble target audience, but the kids are buoyant and captivating despite the fact that they live in one of the worst parts of the world and have (inevitably) horrible futures - unlike American kids who think they're doomed, many of these kids actually are.
