It's a movie that follows a Brazilian artist who works with mixed media and decides to make humongous picture out of garbage of the catadores in Rio de Janeiro's largest landfill. Lets define some of those words, shall we?
Vik Muniz - he was shot in the butt by a rich guy, who gave him enough money so that he could escape to New York City and become an artist. He is the most internationally successfully Brazilian modern artist. (Who knew?) He grew up very poor in Sao Paolo, but made this movie in Rio.
The catadores are people -- 3000 of them!! -- who work in the largest landfill (Jardim Gramacho) on earth - it gets 100% of the garbage from Rio suburbs and... 70% (I think) of Rio's garbage. Their job is to go through the garbage, as it's falling off trucks, and gather recyclable materials because Rio has no recycling program. It's as gross a job as you would think (the juicy garbage falling onto them, one woman found a dead baby last week...). Some of the main characters have been doing this since 11 yrs old, 9 yrs old, when their husband left them, they have no other option besides prostitution, etc. They make ~$25 US per day. The movie follows ~ 8 of these people - photographing them and then having them collect the materials and make the art.
This picture was projected onto the HUGE floor of a warehouse building and all the color, shading, etc was filling in with recyclable materials. Vik then took photographs of the creations and sold the pictures at auction. He made over $250,000 to give back to these folks. The pictures really were pretty amazing (the movie poster is another one of the photos)... not that I'd pay $50,000 for one, mind you, but it was a very interesting hour and a half.
Have you ever heard of catadores?
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