In Canada, on a good day, we recycle around 30% of our waste. While any recycling is a positive step in helping to save our environment , we have been far outdone by Cairo’s population of Zaballeen (Arabic for “garbage people”), who recycle 80% of the garbage they collect from this city. For generations, the residents of Cairo have depended on the Zaballeen to collect their trash, paying them only a minimal amount for their garbage collection services. The Zaballeen survive by recycling the city’s waste. By recycling 80% of the garbage they collect, these entrepreneurial garbage workers created what is arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system.
Filmed over four years, Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys – Adham, a bright precocious 17-year-old; Osama, a charming impish 16-year-old; Nabil, a shy artistic 18-year-old – born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, a ghetto located on the outskirts of Cairo. It is a world folded onto itself, an impenetrable labyrinth of narrow roadways camouflaged by trash; it is home to 60,000 Zaballeen (or Zabbaleen), Egypt’s “garbage people.”
When the city they keep clean suddenly decides to replace the Zaballeen with multinational garbage disposal companies, the Zaballeen community finds itself at a crossroads. Face to face with the globalization of their trade, each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.
“GARBAGE DREAMS is a moving story of young men searching for 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.”
- AL GORE
Garbage Dreams is part of the 2010 TRAVELING WORLD COMMUNITY FILM FESTIVAL in PRINCE GEORGE March 18th – 28th. Schedule is posted online at www.booksandcompany.ca
Festival Pass (33 films) - $30; Brown Bag Cinema Pass (5 lunchtime films) - $10; Day Pass (2-4 films) - $5
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