Walker’s Oscar-nominated documentary depicts the Brazilian artist and photographer Vik Muniz and his work with the “pickers”, or catadores, who survive by scavenging scraps from the world’s largest rubbish dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
There, Muniz photographs an eclectic band of catadores who are the ultimate marginalised population; unemployed in any traditional sense of the word, they resort to picking valuable recyclable materials from the garbage thrown away by those in Brazil more fortunate than themselves. But they display remarkably good spirits and camaraderie, forming friendships and declaring the crucial and meaningful role they play in remediating the results of the contemporary culture of overconsumption and careless disposal.
An uplifting documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Director Lucy Walker takes us on an emotional journey from Rio to the heights of international art stardom.