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.

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.

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.