Children as Chattel: Child Labor & Trafficking in India

But I Am was no ordinary movie. Besides the fact that it was made entirely by children – directed by Ashikul Islam, filmed by Sahiful Mondal and starring only kids – these young award-winning filmmakers are all residents of a home for destitute boys in Kolkata, India (formerly Calcutta). These boys have all come a long way from their early childhoods.

Sahiful was put into indentured slave labor at the age of four, after his father died of tuberculosis. With their mother suffering from mental illness it fell to this tiny boy and his siblings to somehow put food into their mouths. Sahiful’s first job was agricultural work, crushing hard earth with a brick. The backbreaking work earned him the equivalent of 20 cents per day