From mountains of trash comes hope

A Berlin Film Festival entry in February of this year and strongly recommended by Japan's Ministry of Education and Science, God's Children has won recognition not because of flashy visuals, but because it is the first film to reveal people's lives in the largest slum in the world.

Nina is a 12-year-old girl who lives with her family beside a garbage dump in a suburb of Manila. Every day she follows her family, climbing the 50m tall "garbage mountain" to collect recyclable goods. The dirt, the smell, the flies all around and the vast mountain of garbage are her neighbors, but she doesn't care. She has been out of school for a year and she's hoping the goods she collects can afford her another year of school.

There are 18,000 households like Nina's living in the slum. There are 90,000 people living in the narrow alley between the two mountains of garbage. In July of 2000, one of the mountains collapsed due to heavy rain, burying 500 households and some 900 people. Only 300 bodies were found. The government closed the two dumping sites, the only means of making a living for those who lived there.

"Give us garbage!" became the protest slogan for residents marching through the streets of Manila.

Japanese documentary maker Shinomiya Hiroshi shows admirable strength and compassion, having lived with the residents for six months in order to make his documentary. Not only did he capture the devastating garbage landslide, but he entered the lives of those families and witnessed death, desperation and even hope.

In the ending scenes of the film, when the first garbage truck returns to the site after a year's absence, the villagers are overjoyed. Everyone from kids to the elderly, eagerly clamber up the mountain in their rubber boots carrying their tools, ready to work past the setting sun.