The New York Times by Stephen Holden

"We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials," Tião, an impoverished Brazilian catadore, or trash picker, declares to a talk-show host in Lucy Walker's inspiring documentary Waste Land.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

It's not a very good title, Waste Land - this isn't a bleak film, at all - but just about everything else in Lucy Walker's documentary works, and illuminates.

New Orleans Times-Picayune by Mike Scott

The only waste would be if people didn't go see it.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Though narrower in scope and lacking the first-person angle, Waste Land resembles Agnès Varda's great 2000 documentary "The Gleaners & I," particularly in its awe of tough, creative, hard-working people who live on the margins.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Despite his street cred, Muniz comes across as way too effete for these laborerers, many of whom have harrowing life stories to tell. But his intention to have them re-create photographic images of themselves out of garbage, while it may not pass muster as high art, has the effect of raising their spirits.

Village Voice

A fascinating look at the complex intersections of art and charity, reality and perception.

Variety

Lucy Walker's Waste Land takes his (Vik Muniz) project one step deeper by actually getting to know Muniz's models, which brings a compelling human-interest dimension to the sort of art documentary otherwise better suited for TV.

The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore

Overall, though, the project brings enough good into this rough corner of the world that viewers can walk out with honest cause to be hopeful for its inhabitants.

Variety by Peter Debruge

Lucy Walker's Waste Land takes his (Vik Muniz) project one step deeper by actually getting to know Muniz's models, which brings a compelling human-interest dimension to the sort of art documentary otherwise better suited for TV.

Village Voice by Eric Hynes

A fascinating look at the complex intersections of art and charity, reality and perception.

Boxoffice Magazine by Steve Ramos

It's important to note that Waste Land is not a landscape film about the landfill itself. Instead, Walker, who also premiered a second documentary at Sundance, "Countdown To Zero," about the threat of nuclear proliferation, shows that Waste Land is ultimately about the pickers, Tiaõ, Zumbi, Suelem among others, who rise up through the power of their own artistic accomplishments.

Movieline by Michelle Orange

A dump is a dump, but it's immediately clear that these are working people who are making the best of their options and who have built a shared camaraderie out of that determination.

Boston Globe by Wesley Morris

Waste Land is just what the film's website says it is: "stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams

While we await the definitive documentary about the glut of garbage, Waste Land reduces this global catastrophe to touchingly human scale.

Washington Post

Spend some time there, thanks to the documentary Waste Land, and you start to get the sense that, amid the trash, something really is blooming.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

It probably would have helped if Walker (who credits two other codirectors) had chosen just one of those avenues for deeper study; her doc has a vertiginous way of feeling arty and ephemeral at one moment, humane and maybe too earthbound the next.