Garbage Dreams

As jobs go, sanitation worker isn’t high on most teenage boys’ lists. In director-cinematographer Mai Iskander’s feature-length documentary debut, three teenagers spend endless days collecting and sorting trash—and nights sleeping among it. Adham, Osama, and Nabil are three of the 60,000 residents of Mokattam, a garbage village on the outskirts of Cairo. For generations, the larger city has depended on the villagers, the Zaballeen, to keep order for a community that lacks a formal sanitation system. They don’t just keep order. A staggering 80 percent of the waste they gather is recycled. American-born, half-Egyptian Iskander views the chaotic closeness of her homeland and the creative efficiency of the Zaballeen through the eyes of these unique young men. When Cairo’s decision to partially privatize the garbage trade threatens their day jobs, Iskander finds their goofy passions and earnest dreams undiminished. Effervescent and luminous, Garbage Dreams uncovers the boys’ realities as they are forced to make choices that will influence their future and the survival of their community. —siff.net