"This outcry against the substandard living conditions of Mali's poor is a first feature from director Cheick Oumar Sissoko, who studied film in Paris and with Jean Rouch. The opening shows little Kalifa (Macire Kante) being thrown out of school on the first day, because his family is too poor to give him a wooden desk to sit in. Kalifa, a spunky, streetwise eight-year-old who looks 80, watches more fortunate tykes stumbling with the effort of dragging their desks to and from school each day, and realizes his future is already sealed. In order to earn money for school, he starts collecting garbage in a little wagon. Sissoko's pint-sized star is full of four-letter words and witty observations about life, which saves him from the mawkish sentimentality that would seem endemic to this kind of picture.... The Garbage Boys was shot on a shoe-string, but suffers little from it. The stripped down, real-life sets bring audiences closer to the characters... The film won a gold medal at the Mannheim Film Festival." Deborah Young, Variety