Hafizzz
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India
A new documentary focuses on one young boy out of the nearly 18 million Indian children who live on the train tracks, facing a life with no future. Lucky Express: Indias Forgotten Train Kids released Aug. 27 on DVD and on demand in select markets.
With over 11 million passengers, 39,450 miles of tracks, 15,000 trains, and 7,000 stations, Indian Railways is a universe unto itself. Each year over 120,000 destitute children, with nowhere else to go, arrive at the platforms and join a gang in order to survive. Depending on their gang leader, some pick rags, serve tea or collect water bottles. Others turn to pick-pocketing or worse, glue-sniffing and prostitution, said a spokesperson for the film.
Almost 90 percent of these children struggle to earn just a dollar a day, and after food expenses, most of that money goes towards paying for protection from rival gangs or towards drugs.
In making the film, documentarian Anna Fischer has turned the spotlight of one of her young subjects, Vijay Lucky Bahadhur, who started working at the age of five as a chaiwallah and later earned his keep as a pickpocket. Lucky serves as the guide, allowing the films viewers intimate access to the children who share their astonishing life stories, hopes, and dreams.
Crisscrossing the plains of India all the way to Nepal, the film follows Lucky as he returns to the Himalayan foothills to search for the family he left at the age of five years old.
A new documentary focuses on one young boy out of the nearly 18 million Indian children who live on the train tracks, facing a life with no future. Lucky Express: Indias Forgotten Train Kids released Aug. 27 on DVD and on demand in select markets.
With over 11 million passengers, 39,450 miles of tracks, 15,000 trains, and 7,000 stations, Indian Railways is a universe unto itself. Each year over 120,000 destitute children, with nowhere else to go, arrive at the platforms and join a gang in order to survive. Depending on their gang leader, some pick rags, serve tea or collect water bottles. Others turn to pick-pocketing or worse, glue-sniffing and prostitution, said a spokesperson for the film.
Almost 90 percent of these children struggle to earn just a dollar a day, and after food expenses, most of that money goes towards paying for protection from rival gangs or towards drugs.
In making the film, documentarian Anna Fischer has turned the spotlight of one of her young subjects, Vijay Lucky Bahadhur, who started working at the age of five as a chaiwallah and later earned his keep as a pickpocket. Lucky serves as the guide, allowing the films viewers intimate access to the children who share their astonishing life stories, hopes, and dreams.
Crisscrossing the plains of India all the way to Nepal, the film follows Lucky as he returns to the Himalayan foothills to search for the family he left at the age of five years old.
