Slumdog Hits Back at Exploitation Reports: Movie Movie

Responding to a report in The Daily Telegraph in which the parents of child actors Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail claimed the children were underpaid, Danny Boyle and Chris Colson issued a joint statement in which they said the children were enrolled in elementary and secondary school for the first time after filming had completed, and that a fund had been established to pay for their education and basic living costs and health care. A ‘substantial’ fund had also been put in place to pay for college tuition. When the film won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto in September 2008, the $15,000 (£10,500) was paid into the children’s college fund.

The statement said: ‘Since putting these arrangements in place more than 12 months ago, we have never sought to publicise them, and we are doing so now only in response to the questions raised by the press.’

Fox Searchlight, Fox Star and Pathe also issued a corresponding statement supporting Boyle and Colson and stating that they were looking into additional measures to protect the children as a result of the intense media scrutiny since the story first broke.

The children won the parts in Slumdog Millionaire after director Boyle and writer Simon Beaufoy completely reworked the film’s first act which was initially planned to be in English. Casting director and co-director Loveleen Tandan was unable to locate any Indian children with the requisite undernourished look of impoverished slum-dwellers because Indian children who can speak English are nearly all relatively well-off and therefore correspondingly well-fed. To solve the problem the dialogue for the seven-year-olds was re-written in Hindi.

The report in The Daily Telegraph stated that Rubina Ali, who plays the youngest Latika, earned around $1,000 (approximately £700) while Azharuddin Mohammed Ishmail, who plays the youngest Salim, earned $2,400 (£1,681) and that neither actors shared in the film’s financial windfall following its’ worldwide success. According to the film’s makers these payments for 30 day’s work compared to three times the average local adult salary.

Colson said they did consider moving the actors and their families away from the slums of Calcutta once their parts in the filming were complete, but eventually decided against it, believing it was better to ‘ameliorate the lives they are living, and put them in schools that work with underprivileged kids,’ while covering their other financial needs.

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