‘Real Slumdog’ film with five-year-old star is tipped for Oscar

An award-winning film dubbed "the real Slumdog" is being tipped to collect an Oscar.

Streetwise: Bilal, a boy from Calcutta, looks after his blind parents

The feature-length documentary, Bilal, is named after a street-smart five-year-old boy from Calcutta who looks after his blind parents and 18-month-old brother.

The film has won eight awards after being shown at 30 international festivals and the producers hope to enter it for next year's Academy Awards.

Director Sourav Sarangi said: "The film was not inspired by the success of Slumdog Millionaire. My film is just the opposite. It talks of hard poverty and not of the poor turning rich. It is the story of real India. I have seen poverty through a totally different lens."

Sarangi began filming in 2005, when Bilal was three. The family earned £30 a month from Bilal's parents' roles in the Calcutta Blind Opera, a theatre group for the blind. His father also ran a telephone booth.

"What amazed me was how skilfully little Bilal managed the family, and his uncanny sense of direction and ability to know what to do when," said Sarangi. "I was struck by how he handled his parents, be it helping them to cross roads or go to the cheapest shop to buy rice. It was a revelation."

The film has been picked up by London distributor Mercury Media which is planning a premiere this year.

It has already won awards at the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival in Qatar, the Festival del Cine de Pobre de Humberto Solás in Cuba, the Mexican Film Festival and the Las Vegas International Film Festival.

One critic, Kathy Berger, wrote: "Slumdog Millionaire gave us the fictionalised story of the slums of Mumbai. Bilal is the real deal."