Zana Briski was born in London, England. After earning a master's degree in theology and religious studies at the University of Cambridge, she studied documentary photography at International Center of Photography in New York. In 1995 she made her first trip to India, producing a story on female infanticide. In 1997 she returned to India and began her project on the prostitutes of Calcutta's red light district. She has won numerous awards and fellowships including George Soros' Open Society Institute Fellowship, an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism and first prize at the World Press Photo Foundation Competition. Since 2000 she has conducted a series of photographic workshops with children of prostitutes in Calcutta. The photographs produced by the children were auctioned at Sotheby's in New York in 2001 and presented in Amnesty International's 2003 calendar. In 2002 Zana and co-director Ross Kauffman were awarded grants from the Sundance Institute, the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts for their film, Born into Brothels, a feature documentary about the children of Calcutta's prostitutes. In 2002 Zana created Kids with Cameras, a non-profit organization to empower marginalized children through learning the art of photography.

Ross Kauffman worked as a documentary film editor from 1992 - 2000. He spent three years at Valkhn Film and Video Inc., a post-production company where he worked on a wide variety of films for producers such as Jim Lipscomb, Kevin Bachar and Melvin Van Peebles. In 1994 he began a longstanding working relationship with Emmy Award winning producer and editor Sam Pollard, editing diverse projects such as Hookers of the Point, one of the highest rated America Undercover documentaries in HBO's history; Going Places with Al Roker for WNET/THIRTEEN; as well as the award winning series City Arts/City Life for PBS. He has also edited documentaries for National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. Since 2000, he has been reaching out to different aspects of documentary production, working as a director of photography on Family Stories, a film about an extended African American family separated by geographic, social and economic lines. Recently, he has begun producing and directing independent documentaries. A Weekend with Mr. Frank is a one-hour documentary portraying the relationship of photographer Robert Frank and his longtime Japanese publisher, Kazahiko Motomura. Superintendent chronicles a day in the life on Monilal Manie, superintendent and resident Hindu priest of a downtown New York City loft building. In 2001, Kauffman teamed up with award winning photojournalist Zana Briski to produce Born into Brothels, a feature documentary about the children of Calcutta's prostitutes. In 2002, Kauffman formed Red Light Films and along with Briski was awarded grants from the Sundance Institute, the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts to complete the film.