Recycled Life
Children in a Jar
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Recycled Life
Directed by Leslie Iwerks.
US, 2006, digital video, color and b&w, 40 min.
An inside look at Central America’s largest landfill, the Guatemala City Garbage Dump, where thousands of people have been living over the last sixty years.
For the children living on the streets of Central American cities, the reality of their daily struggle to survive has them continually searching for a way out. In fact, most Central American urban areas contain subcultures of street kids fighting to survive and escaping only temporarily by using cheap drugs. Children in a Jar is a dramatic snapshot of how these children survive each day, as young boys and girls relate how they steal and beg for food and money to buy glue, and how they have been raped and witnesses to murders. Even in this desperation, the uncertain future of these young addicts holds promise beyond the bottom of their glue jar.