The Dandora Landfill is the largest of its kind in Kenya. It receives industrial, agricultural, commercial and medical waste, amounting to about 2,000 tonnes per day. It is estimated that more than a million people live in the vicinity of the landfill. Residents work informally, sorting scrap by hand and selling it to recycling plants on site. The plastic hills and canyons of Dandora represent not only an entirely human landscape but also an emerging microeconomy. Prolific and easy to obtain, waste plastic has become a resource on its own, to be mined and sold as source material. But so much of it cannot be re-used and will be left to congeal in landfills, spilling into our waterways and oceans, eventually forming a significant sediment layer in the strata of the planet, and marking the Anthropocene in geological time.
2020 /
Finalist
ANTHROPOCENE: DANDORA
Director & Producer: Nicholas de Pencier, Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky,
Nicholas de Pencier, Nadia Tavazzani
12-year-old Tatheer embarks on a week-long Police boot camp for girls from a social housing estate in Copenhagen. Far from home, deep in the woods, she navigates grueling rituals, elusive social dynamics, and personal setbacks to find her place in this tender and revealing coming-of-age story.
2019 |
6 min
Kenya
Languages: English
