From slumdog to child slave

Ayush Khedekar, better known as the youngest Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire, has been signed up to play a bonded child labourer in his next film Carpet Boy.

Giles Nuttgen, the cinematographer of Deepa Mehta's Fire, Earth and Water trilogy, will turn director with the film, which is based on the true life story of a Pakistani boy Iqbal Masih who worked as bonded labourer from the age of four till his rescue five years later. Farrukh Dhondy, who wrote Bandit Queen and The Rising, has written Carpet Boy's screenplay in English and Urdu and based it on the book that tells Masih's tale.

Carpet Boy will be shot in India, Canada, the US and Pakistan later this year and will be released by December.

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