Trash Scab
From the Archives
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Drama, Short Films, 27-Jan-2021
An entrepreneur pivots with the market. “Trash Scab,” directed by Philip Steiger, is a scarily plausible, bitingly funny vision of a dystopian nightmare. The circumstances have been exaggerated from our current reality but not by much: a pandemic rages on, a citywide curfew in place, police have been disbanded. When sanitation workers go on strike it adds to the chaos, and a young man desperate for cash begins a morally questionable scab service removing trash from the homes of those who can afford it, and disposing of it wherever he can find. It’s a highly energetic, viscerally shot and edited portrait of a broken society. The final scene profoundly portrays the harsh economic divide between rich and poor — as the trash collector takes a tour of a luxury high rise apartment, it’s not clear whether he’s made enough money to afford the spot, or if he’s just there to smoke a cigarette on the balcony 40 floors up and imagine himself removed from the destitution below. -KA. Director Philip Steiger. Starring Philip Steiger, Jacob Wysocki & Will Hines. Cinematographer: Ben Mullen. Art Director: Zachary Louis Miller. Colorist: Andrew Francis. Music: Deerhoof & Ana Roxanne.
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