Mass E Bhat

Mass e Bhat is a portrait of a developing nation, shown through the eyes of its children.  Help us raise the completion funding to get it finished and onto screens!

A feature-length documentary, it weaves together the stories of children living and working in Bangladesh, forced to grow up at an incredibly early age. The stories of these children, their parents, teachers and employers are held together by one central character, Nasir, who from the age of 8 has been working his way out of a life of poverty in the slums.

The film received production funding from the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, who’ve supported many award-winning social action documentaries, including Black Gold (dir. Marc & Nick Francis), Moving to Mars (dir. Mat Whitecross) and the Oscar-nominated Hell and Back Again (dir. Dangfung Dennis).  We now urgently need to raise £16,000 to finish editing and post-production on the film, and to launch our outreach campaign, through which we will be working with our partner organisations to raise awareness and improve treatment for children like those it features.

We’re lucky enough to be working with a fantastic editor, Hugh Williams (whose credits include Black Gold & After the Apocalypse) and the money we raise here will enable him to finish the edit and get the film ready for a broadcast and cinema release.  After it’s finished, we’ll be working with partner organisations including War on Want, TRAID, The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the National Garment Workers Federation on an outreach campaign, using the film to raise awareness of the difficulties facing child labourers and their families in the developing world. 

Our eventual aim is to use the publicity generated by the film to launch a national association for child labourers in Bangladesh, working with War on Want and the NGWF.  This will be the first organisation of its kind anywhere in the world, and will significantly help to support and secure children’s rights and wellbeing – but this can’t happen unless we finish the film!

Please join our campaign to finish Mass e Bhat and raise awareness to the lives of child labourers by donating here on Sponsume.  Everything you give will be helping us to make this film and its outreach campaign a reality.  We’ve only got until Saturday May 5th to raise the funding we need, so please show your support today.

Testimony:

Paul Collins, War on Want: 'The completion and launch of Mass E Bhat will provide the ideal platform from which to kick start a child labourer's union in Bangladesh'.

Amirul Haque Amin, The National Garment Workers’ Federation: 'With this project, we can make changes for the better for child workers in Bangladesh'.

Please click here to see directors Hannan Majid and Richard York presenting the project at the Good Pitch with BRITDOC and Working Films.

For budgetary information, please see below.