Much like the apocalyptic world in which its off-kilter quirky story takes place, Crumbs by director Miguel Llanso, a Spain/Ethiopian/Finland co-production that premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this year, appears to have been blasted so far out of “the box” that it occupies a realm few other sci-fi films dare occupy.
And frankly in the wake of Jupiter Ascending, which has been roundly criticised for simply regurgitating all the usual tropes with little imaginative pulling power of its own, that can only be a good thing.
One of it’s biggest non-run of the mill strengths notes The Nerdist is that it doesn’t place in a major city like London or New York, the usual haunts for post-apocalyptic tales, but in the desolate rural regions of Ethiopia:
“When apocalypses happen in movies, the action tends only to focus on what happens or happened to the larger metropolises. You’ve got your New Yorks, your Londons, your Moscows and the like, but they almost completely ignore the smaller, more rural areas. There’s probably a lot of weird stuff going on with people in Kansas or the middle of the Australian Outback, or, and I think you know where I’m going with this, Ethiopia. Yeah, Ethiopia can be affected by alien invasions and robot wars and the like too, and probably they’d handle it a bit different. A lot different, actually.”
The trailer suggests a film that is offbeat and bizarre, full of spaceships hanging in the sky – apparently the story unspools in a world fractured and barely functioning after a “Great War” that left the Earth and humanity a mere shadow if its former self – bowling alleys that spring to life as if by magic (in actuality some sort of powerful magnetic forces appear to be at work), Power Ranger -like figures with an urge to bagsnatch on horseback and Santa with a devastating swing.
At its heart is a love story between diminutive Birdy (Daniel Tadesse), who believes himself to be of extraterrestrial origin and see the newly-reactivating ship as his ticket “home” and his beloved Candy (Selam Tesfaye), a deep, affectionate relationship which anchors what is in every other respect an off-the-wall addition to the sci-fi genre.
Different it may be, and frankly again that can only be a good thing, but Neil Young of The Hollywood Reporter, only had good things to say about Crumbs in his review:
“Short proves sweet in Spanish writer-director Miguel Llanso’s bizarro mid-lengther Crumbs, an outlandish and imaginative sci-fi miniature-employing film from Ethiopia whose $225,000 budget probably matches Jupiter Ascending’s prosthetic-ear bill. Making potent use of spectacularly extraterrestrial locations in the country’s sunbaked far north around the ghost town of Dallol, the film takes an exotic and sometimes surreal approach to what’s essentially a simple, touching love story. And while not all of Llanso’s flights of fancy get very far off the ground, there’s enough going on here to ensure plentiful further festival bookings in the wake of a generally well-received Rotterdam bow.”
Crumbs is about to get a States-side release thanks to film distributor IndiePix although no official dates have been made available at this time.