JCU Ethiopian Film Festival Kicks Off with "Crumbs" by Miguel Llansò

Crumbs Ethiopian Film Festival

The poster of the film

On Tuesday, March 14, 2017, John Cabot University’s Department of Communications in collaboration with the Guarini Institute for Public Affairs screened the first film of the Ethiopian Film Festival, Crumbs by Miguel Llansó.

An Ethiopian-Spanish co-production, Crumbs is a 2015  film, considered to be Ethiopia’s first venture into the science-fiction genre. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic Ethiopia, after a non-specified “great war” decimated humanity and alien life has been discovered. Humans are left collecting small items from before the war, the titular crumbs, that have now become of great significance to the survivors. An photo of Michael Jordan, for instance, becomes a religious image kept in a shrine, and toy manufacturing company Mattel is defined as “one of the last total artists.” A spaceship that has been dormant for years has now awakened, and the protagonist sets forth on a journey to find a way to board it.

“The Ethiopian Film Festival is an attempt to expand the students’ horizons beyond the university campus, but also to host a series of events of general interest for the Roman community. The Ethiopian community in Rome is quite large, so it seemed like a perfect place to start,” said Communications Professor Kwame Phillips, one of the organizers of the event.

The Ethiopian Film Festival will continue on Tuesday, March 21 at 6 PM with the screening of Lamb, a 2015 film by Yared Zeleke. Following the screening there will be a Q&A session (via Skype) with the director of the film. The closing night, on Tuesday, March 28 at 6 PM, will feature director Giulia Amati, who will present her 2016 film Shashamane.