A proud culture dating back to antiquity, bangin’ food, beautiful people, and funky synth-driven pop music… but why on earth would Remezcla be writing about Ethiopia? The truth is we finally found an excuse, and that excuse is Addis Ababa-based Spanish filmmaker Miguel Llansó. After moving to the Ethiopian capital a few years ago, the young Madrileño director made a name for himself with a handful of short films that premiered at under-the-radar festivals like Sundance, Locarno, and Rotterdam [sarcasm font], before embarking on the production of his first feature, Crumbs, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
But don’t expect an insightful window into everyday life on the ground in The Rainbow Empire (another name for Ethiopia… google it), cause this movie promises to be yet another surrealist acid trip in what seems to be a growing international tendency toward psychedelic mind-fuckery. Case in point: the trailer features an East African Santa Claus dishing out some nasty blows with a tricycle, masked African Nazis, a vertically-challenged hero armed with a toy sword, and a rusting spaceship floating idly in the sky.
This post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure takes us into an unsettling alternate universe inhabited by Candy and Birdy, who squat together in an abandoned bowling alley. When he’s not rummaging for survival essentials, Birdy dreams his life away until one day said abandoned space ship unexpectedly turns back on, sending Birdy forth into an “surreal epic journey” across Ethiopia’s post-apocalyptic landscape.
The trailer sets things up with some heavy, genre-appropriate atmosphere with low-key lighting and overcast skies before picking up speed and barraging us with images of running, screaming, breaking, shrieking and unidentifiable space junk accompanied by a glitchy electronic soundtrack. It’s not exactly clear what is going on here, but it looks like Werner Herzog’s filmography made love to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo while vacationing in the Horn of Africa. Which is to say, awesome.
Crumbs has been picked up for VOD distribution in the U.S. by Indiepix, so definitely keep a look out for this one.