I’d already been to the house a few times, but their parents weren’t there. When I went for Thanksgiving I felt instantly comfortable around Suzanne, she was very warm and receptive. The environment seemed open. I had no idea, at that point, what the background was.

When did you find out?

It wasn’t until the boys and I were getting pizza together, I think for the first time. There had been one time when Govinda had told me that I was their first friend, which I thought was odd. But then, over pizza, Mukunda told me about the time he “escaped” from the house. I realized, at that point, that the story was a lot more complex than I’d thought, and that I needed to be delicate with it. I was even more intrigued, and felt it was my responsibility to figure this out.

You’d been making short films before that. How did you get into filmmaking?

There was a theater program in my high school in Marin County, and I directed plays—then when I was eighteen, I came to New York and studied filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts. While there, I produced a documentary called Excavating Taylor Mead that ended up in the Tribeca Film Festival. After school I started doing short form stuff, collaborating with photographers, getting more into the commercial world. Then I found these kids on the street!

As a documentary filmmaker, and particularly with this project, there’s a bit of push and pull between wanting to befriend and nurture your subjects but also wanting to get material. How did you negotiate that balance?