by SARAH ROWLAND

Gour wants to change the world through his photography. He just has to remember to use a flash at night - a rookie mistake that the 13-year-old boy will never make again, thanks to his mentor Zana Briski. She's the New York photojournalist who originally set out to document the rat-infested Calcutta red-light district. Soon after her arrival, though, she found herself surrounded by inquisitive children, some of whom had never seen a camera before.

Instead of just fielding the endless questions, she started a photography club to satisfy their burning curiosity. But when two of her protégés were forced into prostitution by their own families, Briski and her partner Ross Kauffman decided to make a documentary about her experience as a photography teacher and her struggle to save the remaining students from working on the streets alongside their mothers. The result is Born Into Brothels, a devastatingly beautiful film about eight kids whose outlook on life is transformed through the art of taking pictures.

The Oscar-winning feature starts off with a fearless 11-year-old girl named Puja introducing her classmates. After each summation of their individual personalities, we get a slide show of their respective and surprisingly mature work. One of the first artists we meet is Kochi, a sweet demure girl with a fawn-like innocence and a father who tried to sell her off before she was 10. It was only at the 11th hour that Kochi's sister intervened. Now she lives with her grandmother, but you get the unsettling feeling her mild manner makes her an easier target than Bambi grazing in a wide open meadow. Ending the introductions is Puja. Her best work is drive-by shoots, where she balances on the back of Gour's bike through the chaotic streets of Calcutta. To do this, the exuberant tomboy, who comes from a long line of hookers, must shut out all the people screaming accusations that she stole the camera.

After Kauffman and Briski successfully endear us to these children by letting them tell their own stories, we start to feel the urgency that the two directors have felt all along. It's clear that if they're not placed into boarding schools pronto, the girls will be whoring and the boys will be hustling within the next couple of years. The fact that most reputable educational institutes in Calcutta won't accept children whose parents are criminals doesn't stop the low-key but determined Briski from trying. In between arranging exhibitions of the kids' photos to raise money for the tuition fees, she crisscrosses the overcrowded market squares, dealing with antiquated governmental bureaucracies that seem to be making up obstacles as they go along.

Despite all these insurmountable setbacks, this movie is not a complete downer. This is especially true when the class goes on a field trip to the ocean. We hear them shriek with pure unadulterated joy, as the waves lap up on their little brown toes, a thrill they have never experienced before - all the while snapping and posing wildly. If only for a few life-altering cinematic moments, both the kids and the viewers are suspended in a parallel universe, where there is no abject poverty, child prostitution and complete sense of hopelessness.

Born Into Brothels opens Friday, April 1

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