When fifth standard dropout 17-year-old Shabnam Khan discusses camera angles, she is not just talking close-ups and zoom-ins, she is actually telling you that she sees her future in the frames. Similarly, 17-year-old Neha Belkar from the slums in Dharavi knows how to weave the narrative in a way that will wrench your heart.

Shabnam and Neha are part of a group of 25 underprivileged girls—many from the Dharavi and Kandivali slums and some who were rescued from brothels—whose nascent efforts at filmmaking will see fruition on Tuesday at the Manek Sabhagriha auditorium in Bandra when their five films, four of 10-minute duration and one seven minutes long, will be screened.

An initiative of a clutch of NGOs and others, who include Laadli, MAM movies, Uncle free coaching classes, Apne Aap, LEARN and Bombay Cambridge School, the 25 girls learnt the ropes from filmmakers Sudhir Mishra, Madhur Bhandarkar and Ashok Pandit in 45 days.

The girls have made films on issues ranging from dowry to the problems of the girl child. Sixteen-year-old Pranati (name changed), who has made a 10-minute film on the rescue of a girl from a brothel, has herself undergone the trauma of being kidnapped and serving in bondage in such a place.

Pranati’s story travels to a distant village where a little girl lives her little dreams until the bulwark of the family, the mother, dies leaving the children rudderless. The father is disinterested; in this situation, two men walk in and promise the stars. They con the girl into taking a train to the big city, Mumbai, and then she wakes up in a bordello.

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