[1] It is a low-budget film set in Calcutta and Mumbai that describes the everyday life of its subjects.
[4] The subjects of the documentary were chosen with help from the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (a Calcutta sex worker collective) and at Calcutta's Sex Workers Mela, an annual event held in the city's Salt Lake Stadium that attracts over 10,000 people a day.
[4] In The Flesh follows three sex workers: Shabana (who works the highways near Mumbai), Bhaskar (a hijra who sells sex to men in Calcutta), and Uma (a former theater actress who lives in a Calcutta brothel).
The film follows their daily routines, from picking up customers and sex to their private social lives to violence and activism.
The idea for the film came about while Datta and Point of View were researching a report for the grassroots organization Sangram about its work with sex workers over the previous 10 years.