The Waste Commons / L'Or Dur

Rosalind Fredericks, Sarita West

2024 / 61 minutes
Senegal, United States
French, Wolof with English Subtitles

As cities around the world modernize, enclosing open-air dumps and outlawing waste picking have become key strategies of urban reform. The Waste Commons explores the dramatic transformations surrounding the impending closure of Dakar’s city waste dump in Senegal and the lives that hang in the balance. The film follows charismatic Zidane, trailblazing Adja, and their community of waste pickers as they defend their carefully crafted worlds and their right to waste. Traversing the colossal garbage mountain, it reveals the forms of craft and expertise honed over the last 55 years in the recycling of plastics, metal, and food waste. As Zidane says, the dump “is a mirror of the city.” Far from being a space of chaos, it is both deeply spiritual and an organized archive of Dakar’s postcolonial history.
The film then dives into the politics of the dump closure and the waste pickers’ fight for the waste commons. In a tense standoff, waste pickers bring the capital’s waste management to a standstill. Through this pitched battle over the future of the dump, The Waste Commons illuminates the lifeworlds of urban recyclers and the contradictions at the heart of modernization itself.