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Egypt, 2009, 82 Minute Running Time Genre/Subjects: Documentary, Foreign, Teen Flick Programs: Documentary Films, The Environment in FocusLanguage: Egyptian English Subtitles
DIRECTOR: Mai Iskander Producer: Kate Hirson, Mai IskanderEditor: Kate Hirson, Jessica ReynoldsCinematographer: Mai Iskander
Filmed over the course of four years, Mai Iskander’s Garbage Dreams looks at the hopes and dreams of some young adults whose livelihoods wholly depend on trash. As members of the Zaballeen, a small Coptic Christian community settled on the outskirts of Cairo, they inhabit a small village virtually constructed out of the garbage they sort for a living. Cairo – at 18 million people the largest city in Africa – has no official trash collection services and so depends entirely on the work of the Zaballeen. These highly resourceful workers recycle an incredible 80 percent of the garbage they collect, an efficiency rate far exceeding that of the high-tech systems in place among the world’s wealthiest nations. Virtual outcasts from mainstream society, three teenage trash workers – precocious Ahdam, the impish Osama, and shy, artistic Nabil, along with Laila, a young teacher trying to advocate on their behalf – become further threatened when the city decides to replace them with multinational garbage disposal companies that engage in more advanced but much less sustainable practices. As the boys make difficult choices about their future, Iskander takes us on a stark yet strangely appealing, at once uplifting and heartbreaking journey to a place rarely glimpsed by the outside world.
Official Film Website