An Indian sex workers' group Tuesday said it would write in protest to the Oscar committee against this year's Academy Award-winning best documentary on the lives of children in brothels.

The city-based sex workers' group is angry with the makers of "Born Into Brothels", an 85-minute documentary on the lives of eight children living in the city's biggest brothel and their struggle for uplift through creativity.

"We were not shown the film and were kept in the dark all through by the filmmaker," said Mrinal Dutta, secretary of the Durbar Mahila Sammanyay Committee (DMSC), an umbrella organisation of sex workers in eastern India.

Dutta claimed the committee had asked director Zana Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman to screen the film for them, but their repeated requests were ignored.

"We will write to the Oscar committee voicing our protest and apprehension that Briski may have exploited the lives of common sex workers for her own benefit," Dutta said.

Briski began studying the lives of the sex workers of Sonagachi in 1998 but eventually became more interested in the lives of their children.

She devised a way for the children's creative emancipation by handing the most curious boys and girls 10 aim and shoot cameras and asking them to go out and take pictures.

The children's struggle, joy and talent with their cameras inspired Briski and American co-director Kauffman to film a documentary.

Alongside, the pictures taken by the children toured the world in exhibitions and raised almost $100,000 - the money earmarked for the education of the children.

DMSC officials, who have not seen the film but heard about it from other sources, said they fear the documentary is inauthentic in not being shot in Sonagachi, but in some other neighbourhood in the city.

Doubts are also being raised about the identity of the children showed as offspring of sex workers of Sonagachi.

"No one told us that a documentary was being made on the lives of the children of sex workers. We are not unhappy about that, but we wish a balanced view of things were presented. Also, we want the collective uplift of the children and not only a few individuals," said Dutta.

DMSC said it had called a meeting of its executive committee Thursday to decide on the future course of action.

But far removed from these controversies, the children who figure in the documentary are happy with the film's success.

"The film has changed our lives. We owe so much to Zana auntie," said Puja, a 14-year-old girl who showed journalists a book compiled from their photographs.

Puja, who uses only one name, said on Briski's insistence many of her friends and other children had enrolled in schools and were pursuing other vocational courses. "I've myself begun taking computer classes."

Briski has also helped many boys like Abhijit Das and Manik Das to go to school and think of a life beyond the squalor of the brothels they were born into.