Garbage Dreams-blurb published in Cineaste magazine

Mai Iskander’s documentary Garbage Dreams shows how the Zaballeen, a lower class peasant group in the outskirts of Cairo, struggle to survive amid the globalization of their one form of income, garbage disposal. Unfortunately, Iskander’s focus on depicting the Zaballeen’s inability to do anything about their situation and his obsession with making the audience feel his subjects’ sense of exhaustion have the opposite effect: the film feels dull and disassociated. However, one can glimpse certain potentials. There is a moment when one of the teenagers featured in the film, Osama, who has had enough of living in such poor conditions and of being invisible in the eyes of other Egyptians, decides to go to work for the foreign, hi-tech garbage company brought in by Cairo’s city council. When his friends learn that he is holding this job, they “innocently” rough house with him. The audience can see the tension between ambition and loyalty, which is here recast as one between globalization and traditionalism. The film’s point suddenly becomes clear, only to be lost once again when the scene abruptly ends. The experience is akin to skimming a newspaper article on a tragic situation in a foreign land and failing to become incensed enough to do anything about that situation. The main problem with Garbage Dreams is that Iskander fails to make the audience truly indignant at the Zaballeen’s plight. One sees, but doesn’t feel, what is at stake. This is ironic, considering that the filmmaker is so intent on showing the audience the lower classes’ predicament in Cairo.