Gateway of Arabia

Since the 1960's people from the Indian Subcontinent have come to the Gulf Countries making up the bulk of the workforce.

In recent years the influx of Indians, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and many others has peaked in tens of thousands of labourers coming every year to seek employment on the construction sites in Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha, or working as housemaids or other forms of unskilled workers. They are drawn from some of the most impoverished areas in the world, many from rural India like Kerala.

Agencies looking out for people desperate to earn money doing whatever work is offered to them go from village to village in order to recruit young unskilled men to embark on a trip that will take them to some of the richest countries in the world. Yet they will not participate in the wealth of the Gulf, even though it has so much money to spare. In fact they will endure typically three years of misery and hardship. They will live in cramped labour camps, work under hard conditions not knowing when or if they will see their loved ones again.

Gateway of Arabia tells the story of the neglected underclass that can be found in every country along the shores of the Arabian Peninsula, from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. It is the first movie that will take an unplugged and uncensored look at the living conditions of the surpressed labourers. We will follow the real life story of a young Indian man who left his village in India to seek a better life and finds himself trapped in a vicious cycle of exploitation.

"Gateway of Arabia" plays on the name of Mumbai's greatest attraction. Similarly to Mumbai the booming economies of the Gulf attract large numbers of Indians from the countryside but with deeply eroded civil rights.