‘Garbage Dreams’ Explores Recycling in Cairo Slums

In a ghetto located on the outskirts of Cairo lays the world’s largest garbage village. Zaballeen (or Zabballeen) is home to 60,000 of Egypt’s “garbage people.” Call it a low-cost recycling effort for the city. For decades, residents of Cairo have relied on the Zaballeen to collect their trash, paying a small amount for their services.

The Zaballeen’s livelihood depends on trash they collect. Recycling more than 80 percent of garbage, the Zaballeen may be the world’s most efficient waste disposal system. But their survival is challenged when Cairo plans to replace the Zaballeen with multinational garbage disposal companies.

The new film, Garbage Dreams, dives into the Zaballeen’s world. Directed and produced by Mai Iskander, the film follows three teenage boys over a four-year time span in which each boy is forced to make a decision about his future in the face of the globalization of their trade.

Al Gore personally chose Garbage Dreams as the Reel Current Award winner at the Nashville Film Festival because of its accurate depiction of a contemporary global issue.

“Mai Iskander guides us into ‘garbage village,’ a place that so different from our own, and yet the choices they face are so hauntingly familiar,” Gore says. “Garbage Dreams makes a compelling case that modernization does not always equal progress.”

Since its debut, Garbage Dreams has been critically acclaimed and has won several awards including the World Cinema Best Director and the World Cinema Audience Award at the Phoenix Film Festival. Garbage Dreams will play at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 9-10.