Crumbs (II) (2015) User Reviews

Easy to enjoy, harder to understand

[filmbizarro · 7/10 · 5 August 2015]

It's festivals like Fantasia International Film Festival that truly bring out some original titles to recognition. "Crumbs" is a title that I most likely would have missed out on. Not because the trailer or synopsis wouldn't intrigue me, but because when you run a site like Film Bizarro you are mostly surrounded by horror fans and "Crumbs" doesn't exactly bring in that crowd, yet this is the type of movies I enjoy pushing for the most. Now, having seen "Crumbs" doesn't really mean that I understand what the hell I watched.

Impressions were left, thoughts were pondered, ideals were questioned, the future was feared and the visuals were mesmerizing. So what the hell is "Crumbs"? Imagine yourself in a post-apocalyptic Ethiopia. The world has gone through wars after wars, so much so that the world is now in a strange state of hopeless peace. There is a spacecraft hovering above Ethiopia, one that people hope to get on somehow. People loot and scavenge for old items such as toys, records, figurines and other artifacts from our time to hopefully sell - or better yet, trade for a spot on the spacecraft. Candy is a small man with a slight physical disability who believes he doesn't belong to this world, and so he wanders into an adventure through the Ethiopian lands to reach the spacecraft.

Storywise I can't go further into "Crumbs". It's a movie to experience, to sit down and watch to let it occupy your mind - but without it feeling too heavy-handed about it. It's a rather pleasant, easy watch compared to similarly themed movies. Sure, it brings to question a lot of things such as the worth of material things, religions and who you look up to, where we all belong and what we love. There are wonderful moments where you see celebrities from our time being prayed to or random items being of importance. Simple things that can make us question the things we look up to in life. But above all I feel that "Crumbs" should be watched in the same way as you read a poem - whatever you feel and see in it, is there for you to interpret. If you find nothing, then that is okay too.

No matter what you meanings or thoughts you find in this surrealistic love story/sci-fi adventure, you can't say anything bad about the visuals. With completely absurd yet beautiful locations that are of another world compared to the very green Sweden that I live in, it's easy to get pulled into a post-disaster atmosphere and be there right next to Candy. This is the rare movie that has quite a bit of dialogue, but which would have succeeded in saying almost the same thing even if you watched it without subtitles.

"Crumbs" is luckily just 68 minutes short, which is a perfect length for something so abstract and strange as this. The movie is surprisingly cheerful which adds to making it an easy watch rather than a Tarkovsky-like narcose (I love Tarkovsky, but you know what I mean). The movie is best seen as something you're allowed to have different opinions on. It is very open, but has many distinct things that will get discussions and possible conflict going. I might have left the movie with merely open ideas of what it could all mean, but that didn't make the experience any less enjoyable.

Short, Surreal Oddity from Ethiopia

[alisonc-1 · 6/10 · 3 August 2015]

Centuries after the apocalypse, the malformed Candy (Daniel Tadesse) loves beautiful young Birdy (Selam Tesfaye) and she loves him too. But Candy is troubled: he thinks the strange spaceship hanging in the sky is starting to operate again, and in the bowling alley where he and Birdy live, some of the ball-returning mechanisms have also started working, all by themselves. Candy hopes that the local witch can help him make sense of these signs, but she tells him that he must travel to the far-away city to find Santa Claus, who is the only one who can tell him what to do. So Candy starts off on his strange quest, while Birdy stays home and daydreams that her unborn child has been fathered by a more perfect specimen than Candy....

This is a very strange film, in which a photo of Michael Jordan on the b-ball court is a shrine, a Michael Jackson vinyl LP is venerated and cheap plastic toys are precious items to be bartered for enough money to perhaps earn passage on the spaceship to, well, wherever the ship might be going. I can't say that I understood it really at all, but it was an interesting film nonetheless. We in the West don't often see Ethiopian landscapes, which is more varied than I would have thought, and the characters are all engaging in their own, strange ways. It's a very short film at 68 minutes, and worth your time to check out, if only for its oddity.

Eccentric sci-fi from Ethiopia

[Red-Barracuda · 5/10 · 11 December 2017]

It's not every day I encounter a movie from Africa. When I have seen one, it often turns out to be quite strange. Crumbs is the weirdest one yet. Set in a post-apocalyptic Ethiopia, the story follows a disfigured man called Candy who tries to find a way to get aboard a huge spaceship which has continually hovered over the landscape for many years. There are signs that it seems to be reviving after being dormant for centuries. Candy is sent on a quest by a local witch to find a black Santa who will advise him of what he needs to do.

The synopsis is bizarre but the film is even stranger still. It is a little bit surreal and somewhat avant-garde, mainly on account of its obtuse nature. Nothing is spelt out particularly clearly but I do suspect that this is at least partially on account of people from this part of the world having very different inbuilt ways of expressing themselves compared to us in the West. But even with this in mind, I still think Crumbs is a fairly abstract film. There are interesting details to take in along the way such as the way that the precious items of this future are now our contemporary pop cultural things such as plastic toys and vinyl LPs, what we consider throwaway have now attained a high currency in this distant future. While celebrities from our time have attained godlike status, which in some respects they do nowadays but without the religion. So what does it all mean? No idea. But it was a bit different that much I can say for sure. It benefits from being from a part of the world with little cinematic output and having unusual locations to work with. It also has the manners to not let its experimental nature overstay its welcome with a brisk running time of 68 minutes. I can't say I necessarily enjoyed this one or got much out of it but I at least acknowledge its originality as something worthwhile.

Fantastic apocalypse

[reguizar · 7/10 · 7 December 2020]

Story base on an apocalyptic world creative story and characters use of the pop culture as symbols

Fun!!!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 1 October 2020]

Candy (Daniel Tadesse, who has worked with director Miguel Llansó on four different projects) is a small man under a large sky that is filled with a hovering spacecraft that surely must be dead as it hovers above. Yet since he was young, he dreamed of being on that ship.

Candy knows that the ship is alive again and he's sick of being a collector of discarded ephemera, like all the late 20th century pop memorabilia he keeps finding. This is a world where a Ninja Turtle toy can be seen as a god, where Michael Jordan is worshipped as a deity.

Ethopian science fiction, set inside a pre-apocalypse country that looks like the end times already came, capped with a religious experience while watching the Turkish remake/remix/ripoff film Süpermen Dönüyor. Trust me - that's all it took to make me adore this.

If you think this one is strange, well, get ready. Tadesse and Llansó followed it with Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway, which was recently released by Arrow Video. This movie is on the second disk of that release.

Man - who knew that on the other side of the world such astounding movies were being made? I'm excited to see what happens next.

Allegorical SciFi Love Story from Another Place

[louis-coury · 9/10 · 7 January 2018]

I loved this movie. I appreciated seeing the lush landscapes of the Ethiopian highlands, the quartz deposits in the desert, and the abandoned train yard in Addis Ababa used as the backdrop for this movie. This is a memorable film filled with remarkable imagery that will stick with you for a long time.

Other user reviews have summarized the plot quite nicely, so I will not duplicate their efforts here. At its heart, the film is a gentle and charming SciFi love story. I do want to add, though, that I did *not* find the movie as obtuse or abstract as some of the other reviewers did. Perhaps it is because of my middle eastern heritage and an implicit understanding of allegory in Arabic/Amharic traditions that this film resonated so deeply with me.

While the movie is open to many interpretations, my reading of it was as an allegory for a spiritual journey that ultimately leads to disillusionment with the divine, and a return to finding love and contentment in the here and now.

**** Spoiler Alert ***** My explanation of the film and its meaning would be that Candy is an imperfect man barely existing in an apocalyptic wasteland who has created a narrative in his own mind that he is from another planet. He believes in a supernatural presence that has been dormant in his adult life (the spaceship), but is now reawakening. This reawakening is coincident with the pregnancy of Candy's partner, the beautiful and superficially perfect Birdy.

Candy becomes obsessed with the supernatural - the spaceship, why it is reawakening at this time, and its potential to take him and his family to another planet where he will be recognized as a superman, of sorts. This results in Candy undertaking an odyssey to understand and come closer to the supernatural. Eventually, he comes to view the Santa Claus character as an oracle of the divine. Just as Santa Claus is a secular symbol for Christmas that serves as a connector to a deeper religious tradition, Candy believes that the Santa Claus character can somehow connect him to the spaceship (the divine).

After a long journey, he eventually locates the Santa Claus oracle, and engages in a physical confrontation, which leads to him understanding that there is no connection to the divine through this man, whom he discovers to simply be a tired old man living out his own fantasy. The fact that he can communicate with Birdy and Candy through the mechanical system in the abandoned bowling alley is a humorous detail that furthers the narrative, but also may represent tradition and societal norms. (There is a lot of humor in this film - I loved the shrine to Michael Jordan and the use of Michael Jackson records as currency!)

After his encounter with the Santa character, Candy stumbles upon a movie theater that has been showing a Turkish Superman movie continuously for 40 years. The now-blind projectionist recognizes Candy and informs him that Candy used to come see the movie with his father when he was very young. He is told that his father moved him to the countryside for his own safety before he died, apparently when Candy was still quite young. We later see Candy throwing his Superman costume in the lake in a state of disillusionment. He now realizes how he invented his Superman narrative.....

The film ends with Candy returning to his beloved Birdy. They spin together on a dilapidated rocker/swing, perhaps representing the passage of time as they grow old together. One reading of the moral underlying the narrative is that the enlightened live and love in the here and now, rather than pining after myths and the supernatural.

Just my $2.00E-2 worth!!

Different Psychology than U.S. or European

[dncorp · 6/10 · 10 August 2017]

Having been to these 3rd World Nations, this movie shows just how alien these Nations thought processes can be, while mixing in some Western European or U.S. culture into their own Cultures (like Santa Claus and Christmas). Reason why as not to offend, we as U.S. Army Special Forces attached to the CIA Study the Cultural Anthropology and languages of the Target Nations.

Ethiopia looks just like their neighbors, that I have also been to, Somalia (Battle for Mogadishu), Sudan (Muslim Khartoum Versus Christian Darfur), Kenya as ruled by the Arabic Omani Muslims (previous Slave catchers), some places at Libya (President Gaddaffi a U.S. Ally since 2006), Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, and even Yemen look like this also. As not much needed to make a Post Apocalyptic Movie.

I was so glad when U.S. AFRICOM was created 2009, as I though I would not be sent to these Nations again. I was so wrong, as getting sent into Libya 2010 as U.S. Army Special Forces Insurgency Warfare to start a Civil War to Overthrow U.S. Ally President Gaddaffi (I had been there, Libya, during the Negotiations with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Libyan President Gaddaffi to become a U.S. Ally 2006).

Ethiopia's Military is one of the only Nations strong enough to help Nigeria fight Boko Haram and Al Shabaab (Al Sheebah) at the other African Nations. After Democrat President Obama's Overthrow of U.S. Ally President Gaddaffi, Democrat President Obama's Supported Islamic Democracy Movement aka "Libyan Rebels" became Al Quada's Ansar Al Shariah after becoming the Libyan Government they renamed themselves Islamic State Libya. U.S. Ally President Gaddaffi as terms to become a U.S. Ally was required to "Aggressively Fight" Muslim Terrorist Organizations the result would be stability of the Entire Continent of Africa, as this would cause the Muslim Terrorist Organizations to get stuck only at U.S. Ally Libya fighting against U.S. Ally President Gaddaffi's Libyan Military that had Decades of Weapons, Munitions, Military Equipment, Anti Aircraft Missiles, Explosives, bought by Libya's Oil Wealth as stored at the U.S. Ally Libyan Military Depots of Hight Razma, Benghazi Libya.

After Democrat President Obama's Overthrow of U.S. Ally President Gaddaffi as U.S. Military Operation Odyssey Dawn, Democrat President Obama's Supported "Libyan Rebels" (Al Quada's Ansar Al Shariah ) seized the Decades of Libyan Military Weapons, Munitions, Anti Aircraft Missiles, Explosives, Military Vehicles, and resupplied the Millions of Holy Warriors of Islam Worldwide, that then attacked U.S. Ally Tunisia, (U.S. Ally French) Algeria, Mali, Niger (Source of most of World's Uranium), Nigeria as Boko Haram received lots from Al Quada at Libya, Al Shabaab went on the Offensive all over Africa. Anti Aircraft Missiles both U.S. FIM 92 "Stinger" and U.S.S.R. (Russian Federation) SA-7s and vehicle mounted larger Anti Aircraft Missiles (like used to shoot down Malaysian Airlines) started appearing Worldwide, with Al Quada threatening to shoot down U.S. Commercial (Passenger and Cargo) Aircraft to Cripple the U.S. Economy. It is believed that one of these longer range Anti Aircraft Missiles got into the hands of Democrat President Obama's Islamic Democracy Movement Egypt and they shot down the Russian Federation Civilian Airliner, later renamed Islamic State Egypt and Islamic State Sinai as previously named the Muslim Brotherhood as supported by Democrat President Obama to Overthrow U.S. Ally President Mubarak of Egypt a U.S. Ally since 1973, the Muslim Brotherhood then assisted Al Quada's Ansar Al Shariah aka Democrat President Obama's "Libyan Rebels" to attack U.S. Ally President Gaddaffi's Libya from former U.S. Ally Egypt.

This Movie depicts the U.S. Cultural Contamination of African Culture of U.S. Worship of Sports Figures like Gods, Michael Jackson as a "Warrior", "Mogul Warriors" (a powerful or influential person: a mogul of the movie industry). To be able to see how ridiculous this actually is you must look at the U.S. from outside the U.S. "Fishbowl" (from another Nation).

Works well on different levels

[Mike_Olson · 8/10 · 21 March 2017]

Terrific magical film that works well on different levels. Surreal mystery. Post-apocalyptic science fiction. Compelling and weird character narrative. What has to be one of the strangest road/quest films ever. Some embedded humor as well.

Who needs a large budget when you have great cinematography, otherworldly sound effects, amazing locations, all brought together with inspired artistic vision.

I loved every strange crazy bit of it. Well worth seeking it out.

Crumble.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 8/10 · 13 November 2017]

Receiving the wonderful privilege last year to host the event,I felt extremely honoured to be invited to host the 2017 ICM Film Festival. Taking a look at the titles set for the festival,I was thrilled to find one from Ethiopia,which became the first crumb of my festival viewings.

The plot-

The future:

Seeing an alien spaceship hoovering above the post-apocalypse landscape of Ethiopia, superhero Candy travels across the land to find a way to get on the ship,whilst his pregnant partner Birdy looks to a photo a Michael Jordon for guidance. Picking up artefacts from the pre-apocalypse world, Candy looks towards an antiques dealer, a witch, and Santa Claus to give him a crumb to enter the spaceship.

View on the film:

Landing on earth at a compact 68 minutes, co-writer/(with Daniel Worku) director Miguel Llansó & cinematographer Israel Seoane conjure up an incredibly surreal post-apocalypse landscape of decaying buildings covered in sand,and tightly held corner shots reflecting the mountains of twisted metal against the walls of each building. Throwing iconic items of American pop culture such as Superman and Michael Jackson records into the surreal blender, Llansó gives the surrealism a playfully comedic twist,with a narration revealing how rare/valuable each of the items has become,as they hover above earth.

Taking place when popular culture appears to have completely stopped, the screenplay by Llansó and Worku keeps a wonderfully chirpy,playful atmosphere bouncing along the wasteland,with the writers studying the value placed on material possessions in a lightly comedic manner,along with Santa and a witch being given a spiky,Steam Punk edge. Attempting to fly back to the spaceship, Daniel Tadesse gives a great performance as Candy that bursts with superhero excitement,as Candy tries to get a crumb of outer space.

Beautiful, Surreal, Surprising

[pamkray · 10/10 · 21 February 2016]

This is an unexpected gem that I saw on an international flight. Smart science-fiction story about a post-apocalyptic landscape peopled by very few individuals. Their amulets, shrines and other power objects are plastic toys and relics of our contemporary pop culture. The plot contains a kind of love story, a hero's quest and some revelations for the two main characters. The supporting cast of thieves, wise elders, witches and even Santa Claus make for danger and dystopia. A major plot point revolves around a mysterious space ship hovering over the landscape. This is a sweet love story as well as adventure with a few moments of fear and thrilling sensation. It has a great pace and the natural soundtrack lends a sensuality to the movie. It is really great to see an international independent film in an unlikely setting, but I recommend looking for this movie and seeing it wherever. Serious filmmaking and story telling with simplicity and total imagination!! LOVED IT!

Disabled perspective

[gwendolyn8 · 10/10 · 19 March 2021]

Even if the movie had not starred a medically different person, I would still have loved it, as it was hands down one of the most brilliant and different films I have seen in forever, and it really made me want to visit Ethiopia.

As a disabled person, I strongly enjoyed not only seeing a medically different person in the lead role, but seeing them portrayed as a fully three dimensional character whose body is never commented upon. He is just a regular person, exceptional only in the unusually loving and devoted relationship he has with his fiancée.

Anyone who likes this movie may also enjoy it's spiritual sequel (not a literal continuation of the story, but a movie by the same director with the same actor with some of the same imagery) called "Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway". That said, it's worth mentioning that that movie does include a number of references to the main character's size, including some derogatory, and the credits and the end have heavy strobing which can cause seizures (including fatal seizures) in people with epilepsy and / or strobe sensitivity.

In short, this was a fantastic movie with excellent acting, excellent directing, an excellent storyline, and excellent representation.