Waste Land

Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates photographic images of people using found materials from the places where they live and work. His “Sugar Children” series portrays the images of deprived children of Caribbean plantation workers using the sugar from their surroundings. When acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker trains her camera on Muniz, he is cultivating a new idea for a project. He knows the material he wants to use—garbage—but who will be the subject of the new series of works?

Waste Land is a wonderfully resonant documentary that chronicles Muniz’s journey to Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He collaborates with an eclectic band of catadors, or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials, and photographs these inspiring characters as they recycle their lives and society’s garbage. Walker gains fantastic access to the entire process and in doing so, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the dignity that can be found in personal determination.—Sundance Film Festival