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Tião, like the other catadores profiled in the film, is far from an emaciated beggar living out a miserable existence on the way to an early death. But he is humble and has few expectations of earthly glory. Although a social outcast, he organized an association of pickers who live and work in Jardim Gramacho, one of the world’s largest garbage dumps, and likes to think of himself as an environmentalist.

The film — co-directed by João Jardim and Karen Harley, and photographed by Dudu Miranda — observes this giant landfill from every perspective.

Tião is the most prominently featured of several pickers profiled by the film. Their lives are changed forever when they are chosen to collaborate with the artist Vik Muniz, a São Paulo native who is now based in Brooklyn and is well known for his re-creations of famous artworks using unusual materials. Those pieces include two Mona Lisas — one made of peanut butter, the other of jelly — and a “Last Supper” made of chocolate syrup. For his Sugar Children series, he took snapshots of children on a plantation in St. Kitts and copied the images by layering sugar on black paper and photographing the result. The film observes the creation of his recent monumental series, Pictures of Garbage, for which Mr. Muniz, who grew up poor, returned to Brazil.