Biùtiful Cauntri

This documentary takes a look at Hayedeh Shirzadi and her husband's attempt to put an end to the dumping and burial of urban garbage. Due to their hard work and ingenuity, 100% of the city of Kermanshah's garbage is now recycled and the bio waste is made into organic fertilizers. Shirzadi studied recycling in Germany. She returned to Iran in order to clean up the environment, to stop the destruction of arable land, and to curb air and water pollution.

Right outside of Moscow – home to the highest number of billionaires pr. capita – you’ll find the largest junkyard in the world: The Svalka. It’s a hard place run by the Russian mafia. And it's where Yula lives with her mother, her friends and many other people. Life is tough in the Svalka, but it’s also a place where beauty and humanity can arise from the most unlikely conditions. It is from this place that Yula dreams of escaping and changing her life, even if it seems impossible. Oscar-nominated director Hanna Polak followed Yula for 14 years, bringing us along on Yula's journey to achieve this dream.

Waste Not is a film about where your garbage goes, who sorts it for you, and what it is worth if it isn't just tossed into landfill. It's easier and cheaper to retrieve gold from old computers for instance, than to dig it up. Organics can be used to create fertiliser and green electricity and yet each Australian sends half a tonne of food waste to landfill each year where it is contaminated with chemicals and e-waste. We recycle only 50% of all our waste. There is an alternative to environmental apocalypse and we don't have to wait for the politicians to make it happen. All we really need to do is be creative and use our imaginations to turn this waste into wealth again. Waste Not talks to scientists, workers at waste depots, environment campaigners, gardeners and even a famous chef about how easy it is to save the planet by simply recycling properly.

Omondi lives in the biggest slum in East Africa. Everyday he sees airplanes fly over him. He dreams of becoming an airline pilot and flying far away.

Produced by Alfred Higgins Productions with assistance from the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Academic Support Center Film Library, Keep America Beautiful, Inc., and Keep Los Angeles Beautiful, Inc., the 1963 short film A Land Betrayed examines the various ways people have spread the “cancer of ugliness” across America and offers call-to-action solutions to combat the nation-wide problem.

Report on vandalism

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

Follow the Manhattan-based Beavan family as they abandon their high consumption 5th Avenue lifestyle and try to live a year while making no net environmental impact.

Tom the Bottleman is a heartwarming documentary that tells the story of Thomas Morrison, a quiet yet resilient figure in Brunswick, Maine, who has spent over a decade walking the town’s streets collecting bottles and cans. More than a means of survival, Tom’s daily routine represents his deep connection to the community around him. When his essential cart was stolen in 2024, the town responded with unexpected generosity, coming together to support one of their own. Directed by Jake Jakubowski, this film captures the power of perseverance, the beauty of small-town solidarity, and the profound impact of everyday kindness.

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A comic, biting and revelatory documentary following a small group of prankster activists as they gain worldwide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization (WTO) on television and at business conferences around the world.

Artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss create the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. The pair used found objects to construct a complex, interdependent contraption in an empty warehouse. When set in motion, a domino-like chain reaction ripples through the complex of imaginative devices. Fire, water, the laws of gravity, and chemistry determine the life-cycle of the objects. The process reveals a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, and improbability and precision, in an extended science project that will mesmerize the mind.

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

Over the past 60 years, Erkki Rissanen has collected more than a million bottles from the streets of Tornio, and through his selfless cleaning efforts, he brings out the best in people. A heartwarming documentary about a life’s mission, recycling, and community spirit.

An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.

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No description available.

Street Life documents the lives of Chinese migrants in Shanghai, one of the world’s largest and most vibrant cities, now symbolic of China’s economic might. The film centers on Nanjing Road, one of China’s oldest commercial streets and today a popular destination for tourists and moneyed Chinese. The street has also become a Mecca for uprooted and homeless Chinese, who make ends by collecting garbage and recyclables. These characters and their stories are the focus of the film. The central character in Street Life is a migrant known as “Black Skin.” Black Skin faces numerous pressures in the course of the film, including police violence. In the end, these pressures are too much for him to bear and he goes mad. Black Skin’s story intersects with those of fellow bottle collectors, enterprising thieves and even a young boy who has been abandoned.

Every km of ocean now contains an average of 74,000 pieces of plastic. A 'plastic soup' of waste, killing hundreds of thousands of animals every year and leaching chemicals slowly up the food chain. In Holland, scientists found plastic in the stomachs of 95% of all fulmar birds. In Germany, plastic has been found to affect the reproductive systems of animals, while in the US, conservationists are seeing increasing numbers of dolphins die in agony, their guts blocked with rubbish. What will be the long term impact of this 'plastic pollution'? Can anything be done to clean up our oceans?

Mateo (5), Nadia (9), Mati (4) and Isabella (5), are neighbors of a settlement located in the middle of an open-air garbage dump. These little protagonists appropriate the space they inhabit from the playful reflecting what it means to grow up in La Favela.