Garbage Dreams

Synopsis

Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world's largest garbage village, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. It is the home to 60,000 Zaballeen, also spelled "Zabbaleen" as Arabic for "garbage people." Far ahead of any modern "Green" initiatives, the Zaballeen survive by recycling 80 percent of the garbage they collect. When their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of its trade, each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.

Release

Garbage Dreams premiered at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, where it ran in the US Documentary Competition Garbage Dreams had its international premiere in Europe at the twenty-second International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and its Middle Eastern premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival.

Garbage Dreams was shortlisted for the 2010 Academy Awards in the category of Best Feature Length Documentary, was nominated for the 2010 Best Documentary by the Director’s Guild of America, and has won 26 international awards including the Al Gore Reel Current Award and IDA Humanitas Award.

Garbage Dreams aired on PBS Independent Lens for the occasion of Earth Day 2010. It has been screened in over 100 international film festivals, including the Woodstock Film Festival, the Hollywood Film Festival, the Bel Air Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, and the Seattle International Film Festival.

Critical reception

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore presented the 2009 REEL Current Award to the documentary Garbage Dreams at the Nashville Film Festival. Gore, and the writer of An Inconvenient Truth, presents the award annually to a film that gives outstanding insight into a contemporary global issue.

Gore said of the film, "Garbage Dreams is a moving story of young men searching for a ways to eke out a living for their families and facing tough choices as they try to do the right thing for the planet. Mai Iskander guides us into a 'garbage village', a place so different from our own, and yet the choices they face there are so hauntingly familiar. Ultimately, Garbage Dreams makes a compelling case that modernization does not always equal progress."

In Variety Ronnie Scheib called the film "Stunning debut ... [Iskander's] lensing grants her subjects immense dignity (they never appear "other" in their poverty) and her film its curious beauty."

In her review in The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis said "Expertly weaving personal fears, family tensions and political action, 'Garbage Dreams' records the tremblings of a culture at a crossroads."

In The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck wrote "Championed by Oscar winner Al Gore and the spur for a million-dollar donation by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Garbage Dreams could ride its sociological importance to Oscar recognition."

In The Village Voice Andrew Schenker called Garbage Dreams a "handsomely shot and intermittently fascinating look at Cairo's Zaballeen community."

Awards