Garbage Dreams

The protagonists of Mai Iskander's documentary are teenage Zaballeen (meaning "garbage people"), an Arabic term used to describe Cairo's lowest social class. The film chronicles everyday life in the suburb of Mokattan, the biggest "garbage settlement" in the world. For the local community of 60,000 people, collecting and processing the waste of Cairo's 18 million inhabitants has been their only livelihood for a century. We see the youngsters in their pitiable dwellings and at work, as well as on an exchange trip to Wales. They dream of having their own waste-processing facilities and of getting married early, but these hopes evaporate when the highly effective system that enables the inhabitants of Mokattan to recycle 80% of all waste is replaced by a much less efficient system that relies on modern technology from Italian and Spanish firms. This film depicting globalisation's destructive impact on the fate of individuals, as well as on an entire community is Iskander's debut, and it was on the long-list for this year's Oscar nominations.