CASE STUDY | DOCUMENTARY
Breaking Chains: Filming bonded labour inside Punjab’s brick kilns.
Anti-Slavery International & Volunteers for Social Justice | 2017
In 2017, Volunteers for Social Justice and Anti-Slavery International commissioned us to document bonded labour inside the brick kilns of Punjab. A year later, the film was screened at the United Nations in Geneva. This is how it came together.
The brief
The story sat at the intersection of debt, migration, caste, and institutional silence. Families from Uttar Pradesh were travelling to Punjab each season to work off small debts inside brick kilns, only to return home deeper in bondage than they had arrived. VSJ was already rescuing and rehabilitating workers on the ground. What they needed was a film that could carry this reality into advocacy rooms, policy conversations, and international campaigns.
Where we began
We started in Uttar Pradesh, where many of the workers live during the off-season. We filmed inside homes, documented VSJ’s door-to-door awareness campaign, and spent time with survivors and their families. The interviews were powerful. But we knew the film would not hold without imagery from the kilns themselves. Without the sites of bondage, the testimony would sit in isolation.
The clients agreed in principle. They also made the risks clear. Filming inside the kilns was not a permissions issue. It was a personal safety issue.
The decision to go in
We took several rounds of internal discussion before committing. A minimal team was deployed. Raju entered the kilns alone, carrying a GoPro and a handheld camera, presenting himself as a photographer documenting traditional brick-making. Local activists created narrow windows of access. Some shoots lasted ten to fifteen minutes. Others happened during unguarded hours. One was filmed at three in the morning, capturing the pre-dawn routines that define life inside the kilns.
There were no second takes. Every frame was instinctive. The instruction to ourselves was to film the place quietly, without spectacle, and to leave before we were noticed.
The edit
The final film combines survivor testimony with real footage from inside the kilns. It avoids dramatisation. The structure follows the actual rhythm of the system: migration, debt, resistance. Because the stories themselves were strong, the edit’s job was to stay out of their way.
Where the film travelled
The film was first screened in London as part of Anti-Slavery International’s global report release on modern slavery. In 2018, it was selected for screening at the United Nations in Geneva and recognised as Best Short Documentary. Since then, VSJ and partner organisations have used it for advocacy, training, and international campaigns against bonded labour.
What the project taught us
This remains one of the riskiest films we have made. It also clarified something we continue to carry into every subsequent project. When a story demands more from a production team, more time, more risk, more responsibility, the work is to step up with both care and conviction. The measure of the film is not the recognition it received. It is whether the people who trusted us with their voices are seen clearly and truthfully.
Project details
Client: Anti-Slavery International, London & Volunteers for Social Justice, Punjab
Format: Investigative Documentary
Locations: Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, United Kingdom
Year: 2017
Recognition: Best Short Documentary, screened at the United Nations, Geneva, 2018