Garbage Dreams review (DVD) ★★★★

Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Written by Mai Iskander
UK Certification E | UK RRP £14.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 79 minutes | Directed by Mai Iskander

Taking place over a few years in the lives of an impoverished family on the outskirts of Cairo, Garbage Dreams is a feature-length documentary that details the daily struggle of trash collectors clearing up the streets outside of the Egyptian capital. Focusing on three teenage brothers, the award-winning film is an account of the hardships of living in the world's largest garbage village as the Zabbaleen (translated as “garbage people”), a 60,000-strong minority community of Christians who all serve as Cairo's unofficial garbage collectors.

These teenagers were born and raised in garbage and have to rely on it to get by. The Zabbaleen earn most of their small keeps by recycling and then exporting the materials to China and Europe. They haven't the money to fund an operation that includes sweeping the streets with machinery and trucks, and so they quite literally have to wade through mountains of waste, sorting plastic from cans and the like, without any protection, not even gloves. It's a dangerous job, but one that they must do to survive.

But the conflict of this very real story lies in their survival. Since the Zabbaleen have always managed waste on an unelected level, they've never had any legitimate authority to do what they have been doing for so many years. The class-divided Cairo began contracting foreign companies to deal with the huge amount of trash littering the streets. Companies with the finances to buy machinery and trucks and yes, gloves. This could only spell disaster for the 60,000 Zabbaleen and indeed it did.

One of the most startling images in the film, and one that really brings home the plight of the family, is seeing a young woman using a jagged shard of glass as a mirror as if it's the norm. This a community that somehow gets through life by putting absolute faith into Christianity. The three boys on the other hand are dreamers: they long for a bigger picture that seems more than just one world away from their own reality. And that's when it hits. In the West we long for global stardom, for five numbers on the EuroMillions each week, for the impossibly perfect woman or man. The Zabbaleen dream of running factories, university education and family.

While it lacks some depth and background, failing to share a point of view from the side of the foreign contractors (they are people with families to feed too), the documentary remains a powerful film with an important message, and one that's deeply deserving of its international acclaim.

EXTRAS ?? In addition to the disc also including the Spanish version of the film, it contains The Recycling School: a look at the youth institution that, in addition to literacy, maths and ICT, teaches about recycling; a five-minute epilogue; two deleted scenes; and the theatrical trailer.

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