Neoliberal Garbage: Contradiction and Labour in Contemporary Brazilian Films

This article examines Brazilian documentary films that take the landfill as a central setting and garbage labour as their key subject. It argues that while these films do not offer a resolution to the contradictions produced by neoliberal restructuring, they do register the complex and unstable meanings attached to unorganised labour under neoliberalism. Drawing on Raymond Williams’s theory of cultural production under capitalism, the analysis traces how cultural forms both reflect and mediate relations between economic structure and ideological representation. By comparing the formal strategies and representational choices of four films – Ilha das Flores, Boca de Lixo, Estamira, and Waste Land – the article shows how cultural production makes visible the contradictions of precarious labour and offers a limited, but necessary, opening for political insight.