An artist manages to give meaning to the lives of people living in a garbage dump in Rio.

Picture gallery

For two years, the artist Vik Muniz photographed people who live from separating garbage, with the idea of turning their work into a crazy project: transforming refuse into art and thereby money. In Jardim Gramacho, the largest dump in the world on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, 3000 people recycle 200 tons of stinking garbage every day. Paper, plastic, glass, metal: they collect everything that pays. Sometimes they find treasure (books like Machiavelli's The Prince), sometimes they find bodies. How can art change their lives?

Director Lucy Walker offer portraits of incommensurable humanity. Thanks to this Arcimboldian artist, the audience assists, transfixed, in the transformation not only of refuse, but also of these people – who are seen as a kind of rubbish more difficult to dispose of... Daniel Spoerri, Switzerland's national artist known for immortalizing the remains of meals eaten by hipsters, could take a page from this script and recycle... himself!