[Director Lucy] Walker's documentary is an eye-opening trip to a part of the world where garbage serves as liquid currency for people who salvage dignity from degradation with intelligence and grace.

| Mar 27, 2019

What shines through is the strength of the Brazilian landfill workers optimism and uplifting spirit which makes Waste Land more than worth watching.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 2, 2019

With Walker and cinematographer Dudu Miranda, Muniz has a hawk's eye for the weird beauty of bulldozed hillocks of trash and the catador faces that he chose to star in photographic portraits.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2016

This conversion of garbage into humanitarian aid is just the beginning. Practical charity gives way to life-changing intimacy.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 12, 2012

The breadth of gratitude these catadores feel towards Muniz and the life-experience they undertake makes for an intelligent, emotional movie.

| Nov 30, 2011

Waste Land is a real treasure, the sort of heartwarming and life affirming study of people, lacking in both sentimentality and cynicism, that uplifts the audience and elevates the art form

| Original Score: 90/100 | Aug 19, 2011

Waste Land fuses the design concepts behind two of the most high-profile animations of recent years, Rio and the Oscar-winning Wall-E, into an essay about how hard some people are prepared to work.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 13, 2011

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 13, 2011

The result is a film that works on multiple levels, casting light on a worldwide problem while delivering a big jolt of human hope.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2011

Muniz is a gifted, modest and altogether delightful man, and his project is both aesthetically fascinating and philosophically stimulating.

| Feb 28, 2011

It's inspiring, humbling and beautifully made.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2011

A well-made and often uplifting film that refuses to get angry yet still manages to point out that things aren't as they should be for a great many.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 25, 2011

More self-conscious, subtle exploration than the dubious bleeding-heart PR stunt implied by its premise.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 25, 2011

The glimpses of favela life will make you thank your lucky stars you weren't born there.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 25, 2011

Well made and impressively structured, this is a heartwarming, genuinely inspirational and ultimately deeply moving film that has deservedly picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 25, 2011

Perhaps not life-changing but certainly life-affirming.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 24, 2011

This is undoubtedly a bold raid into an unknown territory - both geographic and conceptual - that the prosperous classes prefer not to think about.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 24, 2011

Walker finds inspiration and strange beauty in the squalor.

| Feb 24, 2011

As in her memorable Blindsight, in which sightless climbers took on Everest, Walker celebrates the indomitability of the human spirit.

| Feb 23, 2011

A remarkable testament to working class lives and the unifying power of art, Waste Land is a rare thing - a film that makes you proud to be human.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 23, 2011