Mai Iskander's GARBAGE DREAMS high- lights Egypt's Coptic Christian trash trade

Trash (and what to do with it), like other forms of pollution -- not to mention global warming -- is set to become one of the world's more talked-about subjects in the years ahead of us, so GARBAGE DREAMS, the new documentary by Mai Iskander (shown below, with a certain ought-to-have-been-
President), is nothing if not timely. Her film covers the Zaballeen (which, we are told, is the Arabic translation for "garbage people"), a Coptic Christian community on the outskirts of Cairo that occupies the world's largest "garbage village." Sounds enticing, no?

More varied and interesting than it might first appear, Iskander's documentary actually tracks a recent time when this community, a staple of Cairo garbage-collecting for a century, is threatened with extinction because of Egypt's sudden importation of foreign workers and companies to handle the collection. The Zaballeen have made a "go" of their business and their lives due to their very early use of recycling methods, but now these seem not to matter to the powers-that-be (for whom modern methods and cheap labor are more important). Consequently, everyone is scrambling to survive.

The film centers, more or less, on three Zaballeen boys in their late teens -- Adham, Nabil and Osama -- and on Laila, a kind of social worker/ teacher in the community. Adham (pictured at left on the poster, top), the most business-attuned of the three boys, has a dad who is in prison for illegally construc- ting an apartment for his son so that he can marry (local tradition insists on the groom's having his own digs, pre-nup); Nabil (pictured at right on the poster, top), more family-oriented, is in a similar situation, not being able to afford an apartment prior to marriage; Osama (pictured at right), on the other hand, may have some developmental problems: He can't seem to hold down a job and his priorities appear a little "off." Laila, meanwhile (she's shown standing, center, below), is always present: helping, advising, and providing an ear to listen and a (symbolic) shoulder to lean on.

Iskander's documentary weaves in and out of these lives -- at one point, going into Cairo to talk with the apartment dwellers whose trash is being collected; at another joining two of the boys on a trip to Wales to learn about recycling techniques. Though there is a bit of narration, and a number of facts/situations presented, certain things are simply not addressed. Since it is the government -- of Cairo? of Egypt? -- that has created the problems by hiring the foreigners without so much as even warning the Zaballeen, one would imagine an interviews with some government officials to see how to improve things. Perhaps because Egypt is not a western democracy, this is not possible. But it would have helped -- if not the situation, at least our understanding of how it might be resolved -- had something about this been explained or addressed. (Are Coptic Christians perhaps relegated to second-class citizenship in a Arab/Muslim state?)

By the end of the film, which pretty consistently holds your attention and is -- god knows -- exotic in its steeping us in the life of a village of garbage, I was confused about what was actually happening, or what might still happen -- and why. While Garbage Dreams had its world premier at the 2009 SXSW fest and has won a multitude of awards from smaller film festivals around the country, I won- der if this might be due more to its subject and locale than to its outright excellence as a documen- tary. It's interesting, but it leaves a few too many sub- jects not fully explored. Garbage Dreams opens Wednesday, January 6, at New York City's IFC Center.