Chain reaction: Child labour revisited

Chain Reaction is a documentary film that explores a ground-breaking approach to Participatory Action Research where children working in the worst forms of child labour and the small business owners that employed them, analysed their circumstances and took action.

The film shows a different way of doing development in complex environments.

It is at once, a sobering and inspiring, representation of conditions in the worst forms of child labour, and the way in which children analysed their circumstances and mobilised imaginative solutions in response to their problems.

Their solutions opened up pathways for change that ripple out – a chain reaction.

Made by filmmaker Tobias Thiele and narrated by photo journalist Saumya Khandelwal, this film narrates two of the 800 life stories that were collected and analysed by children. It shows the extraordinary collective analysis process that they carried out and how they mobilised themselves, their peers and adult allies to turn this into action.

Trigger warning:

This film contains material of a highly sensitive nature including accounts of sexual, physical, and mental abuse, and other forms of violence, as well as accounts of exploitative and hazardous working conditions which may be triggering.