Abdul Sattar Edhi in These Birds Walk (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

Any documentary that takes a look at an impoverished Third World nation runs the risk of inducing guilt or appearing like a grim “Save the Children” ad, but These Birds Walk is infused with a sense of life and energy despite its difficult subject matter. At the heart of the film is the work of Abdul Sattar Edhi, a very influential Pakistani philanthropist and founder of the Edhi Foundation, whose centers have been providing medical care and shelter to children all across the country for more than 50 years. The filmmakers tackle the issue of poverty and abandonment through the stories of Omar, a runaway who finds himself at one of Edhi’s homes for boys, and Asad, a savvy ambulance worker who lived on the streets as a child, now tasked with transporting sick patients as well as delivering young boys to a group home (and in some cases, back to their homes).

From the opening scenes that show Edhi, an unpretentious, modestly dressed old man, bathing painfully malnourished young children, the film appears to be treading familiar territory: a poignant, heartrending entreaty to those more fortunate. But though this is a gritty, often hard to watch work, there’s no heavy-handed message designed to manipulate viewers’ sensibilities, nor do the filmmakers attempt to present sensationalized poverty or violence. Rather, the film is a powerful and humanizing look at those who so often go unseen.

It would be all too tempting to cast these individuals into familiar roles—Edhi as a lovingly paternal benefactor, Asad as an idealistic savior, Omar as a sad-eyed waif—but both the filmmakers and their subjects resist these romanticized clichés. The lack of voice-over narration here is a particularly inspired choice, granting Omar and Asad a sense of agency and ownership of their stories that a less trusting filmmaker might have denied them.

Asad is charismatic and immensely likeable, especially in more unguarded moments, yet he’s presented as pragmatic, too, complaining that being called out to locate runaway boys keeps him from earning commissions by transporting patients. But a genuine sense of protectiveness emerges as he returns the boys to homes where many will almost certainly face the same neglect and abuse that sent them running away in the first place. As for Edhi, he exhorted the directors, when approached, not to make a film about him but rather to focus on his work, and, indeed, he appears only sporadically, fulfilling his duties without delving into his personal life or even discussing the amazing impact of his charitable endeavors. (It’s only through the awe with which others on screen refer to him and the foundation that the viewer gets a sense of just how significant his work has been.)

Omar is equally complex. Though often endearing, he’s a boy at war with the world and even with himself. Though he’s left home voluntarily, he pines for his family, for a sense of belonging. Omar matter-of-factly discusses parental abuse, but when other boys pick on him, it sends him into a tearful rage. Yet he shows genuine exuberance and joy, joking with the others, but a wrenching scene at night lit by candlelight finds him despondently asking God for help. Though Omar and the boys come from nightmarish home situations, the filmmakers never play up the shock value of what we see or hear. Rather, these scenes, marked by close-ups of faces, hands and feet, add an intense sense of intimacy, allowing us to feel empathy, not mere pity.

There’s a genuine sense of beauty here, too, mingled among the hardship. Scenes of the bustling and crowded city of Karachi contrast with the small, quieter world of Edhi’s orphanage, and there are some truly gorgeous wordless shots of visual poetry: of the sea, birds soaring, boys flying kites from the gates of the home. A particularly memorable night scene finds Omar darting through crowds on his way to a shrine to say a prayer. The filmmakers have not only shed light upon an oft overlooked subject. They have truly captured its essence.