LANDFILL HARMONIC World Cinema

When an environmental technician arrives at a landfill community in Paraguay in 2006 to work with gancheros — people who collect materials from the site to recycle for income — his first reaction is that the community’s children deserve better than to work in such bleak conditions, and so he starts up a music education program. He soon realizes he has to shift his ideas about what’s best for the families around him, and instead begins to work with them toward a unique goal. LANDFILL HARMONIC is an inspiring documentary about a poor community whose inhabitants have figured out how to turn trash into treasure, by using waste to create unique instruments for a world-touring orchestra of young musicians. The film goes beyond the landfill and follows the young musicians as they gain national attention and have the opportunity to travel the world and give back. –April Wright