I’ve previously mentioned my dislike for the film Finding Vivian Maier on this blog, and I was reminded of it again this week watching Born Into Brothels (though for different reasons): I am suspicious of any filmmaker who makes a film with them as a main character. John Maloof made a film “about” Vivian Maier but ultimately concentrated more on his part of the story than on Vivian’s. Advanced Style (2014) pretends to be about stylish ladies of advanced age but really it’s about Ari Cohen, whose blog the ladies were featured on (and there’s even a scene, shot and left in the final edit by Cohen, who produced the film, in which the ladies talk about how much they love Cohen and his blog). It’s a surprisingly pervasive issue in documentary filmmaking, and one I am extremely sensitive to.

In Born Into Brothels, its focus on the white woman, Zana, as a main character only made me question her presence. If this film is about the children of sex workers in India, why not focus on them? Why does Zana need to be a character at all? I think it’s because in actual fact, Zana wanted to make a film about herself and her quest to get the kids into boarding schools and education programs, and not about the kids themselves, which actually means that the kids are only minor characters in their own story. I felt as if Zana was exploiting the kids and their situation for her own purposes, noble as her actions may have been.

To me, Zana comes off as a White Saviour with little understanding of the cultural context she finds herself in. While it’s tempting to say that it’s admirable that at least she’s trying to help these children, I think that’s actually a dangerous position to take. White people behaving as if is their responsibility to “elevate” the “uncivilised” people of the world and “improve” their lives by “educating” them (using white culture’s understanding of what education is) has led to centuries of colonisation and the decimation of cultures around the world. While I believe strongly in the ability of rich nations to eradicate poverty and disease around the world, a top-down approach where white people unilaterally decide where and how their “help” will be applied — regardless of the wishes and context of the culture they’re trying to help — is not the way to go.

One white lady taking some gifts to India and shoving a movie camera in the face of some poor people isn’t going to benefit anybody in the long run, and in fact may do more harm than good.

So, ultimately, I think Born Into Brothels is an interesting case-study in how not to shoot a documentary in a developing country, and I’m honestly surprised it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.