Redlight to Limelight follows a group of young children who are passionately weaving stories with mothers and sisters through their native video production unit called CAM ON to cultivate a meaningful change in the lives of a special community of sex workers in the brothel of Kalighat, Kolkata. Keeping aside the ghosts of their grimy reality and who they were, women and children get immersed into an incredible joy of storytelling with a burning desire to turn the brothel into a better place. Woven around the experiences of mothers and sisters, CAM ON embarks on making a new short fiction Nupur, which is often entwined between memories and actuality, takes them through a catharsis when the community premieres the film for a public screening -  its voices are heard. With joy and power of storytelling, artful voices make the grimy universe a liberating space of self assertion.

Bipuljit Basu, an IDA Award-nominated filmmaker, bridges social urgency with cinematic craft, moving fluidly between auteur-driven storytelling and urgent human-rights concerns, earning both critical and institutional recognition worldwide. An IDFA and Sundance alumnus, Bipuljit is an emerging voice in Indian cinema, recipient of major international support for his feature documentary Redlight to Limelight, including Sundance Institute, Hot Docs, IDFA Bertha Fund Europe, BBC Storyville, InMaat Foundation, YLE, DMZ Docs, Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, National Film Centre of Latvia.

Redlight to Limelight (2025) premiered at Sheffield DocFest and has screened at leading international festivals including IDFA, DMZ Docs, FIPADOC, Krakow FF, San Sebastian FF, Doc Point Helsinki, Riga FF etc. He is also nominated for Latvia’s National Film Award Lielais Kristaps 2026 and received the Grand Prix at FIPADOC. Bipuljit was nominated for the IDA Documentary Awards in the categories of Best Writing and Best Cinematography in 2025. BBC 4 started broadcasting his film from March 2026 onward.

Midnight Blues (2021), a Short Film premiere at the Kolkata International Film Festival (2021)/Audience Choice award at SIFF (USA)/Distributed by the Library of Congress, USA.

If I hadn’t encountered the marginalized brothel community, I might never have become a filmmaker. They shaped me, awakened my emotions, and helped me grow. My first feature, Redlight to Limelight, was born through them. Trusting their collective intelligence made this film possible.

In 2016, an accident changed my life. A blow to my skull left me with partial hearing loss, nerve damage, and mobility issues. I lost my confidence.

By 2020, I conceived to make the film about the sex workers. That’s when I met CAM ON, a film collective run by sex workers in Kalighat, Calcutta. They create films for joy yet receive no recognition. Immersed in their world, I saw how social participation and equity shape filmmaking.

Over four and half years, I lived with them, witnessing their agony, ecstasy, and creative drive. As I understood their vulnerabilities, they sensed mine, opening their deepest truths to me.

Redlight to Limelight has grown through the journey of knowing each other— At times, they found courage, and at times, I drew strength from their steps along the path.

In this film, the entire sex worker community became the line producer. They’re working with me on my next film too behind the camera.

In this way, we remain bound— By commitment, by creation, by trust.