When student filmmakers Julius Drost and Moritz Henneberg uploaded their short animated movie Butty to YouTube in late 2023, they hoped people would like it. But as their tale of a clumsy domestic robot started to rack up likes and thousands of views a day they thought they might have something more than a passable student film on their hands.
So they took Butty down from the internet and began submitting it to film festivals, inspired by a conversation Henneberg, a part-time tennis coach, had had with film producer Christopher Zwickler, a client at the tennis camp in Turkey where he was working.
In early 2024, the pair received a letter of invitation to a festival. Bingo. But no sooner had they patted themselves on the back than they received a follow-up email: the invitation was rescinded, because it appeared the movie they had submitted was stolen.
Indeed it was. Only they weren’t the thieves.
Thousands of kilometres away, in the US, another student, high-schooler Samuel Felinton, was hawking the film as his own. Different title – T-130 rather than Butty – new credits and a slightly trimmed-down version, but unmistakably the same movie at its core.
There he was on his local TV station, being quizzed on a morning chat show about how he’d made his delightful movie, which was making the rounds of the festival circuit (it eventually played in Milan, London, Moscow, New York, Toronto and more).
“A lot of designs, a lot of draw-ups, a lot of inspiration, pictures,” he rambled, clearly having not the slightest idea about the workings of digital animation. “It’s just bits by bits, and then you put them together, you colour in, the animation’s set.”
When the young Germans who had actually made the film saw this, they were understandably furious. So they decide to respond in the only way they knew how: by making a film about it.
Zwickler was immediately on board as producer, and he drafted in his collaborator Igor Plischke to direct and help shape what began as a revenge tale but ultimately morphed into something far more complex.
“Going to the States and confronting the guy was something the boys decided early on,” says Plischke of the documentary he made about the saga, The Talented Mr F, which is now showing at the German Film Festival running around Australia. “The confrontation part was there from the beginning. The how was something I was more involved in.”
‘Everything is a little bit a kaleidoscope of different emotions.’
Igor Plischke, director
Tracking down Felinton was easy. “He’s someone who is very, very active on the internet. You just have to Google him, and you find everything,” says Plischke.
As the film lays out, the guy was a prolific YouTuber, and had a vast internet presence, as CEO of Felinton Inc, with registered businesses in fashion, tool making and other industries – none of which had ever actually made anything. He spoke with confidence and conviction of his desire to have a tower in the middle of Morgantown, West Virginia, dedicated to his company.
“It’s more, I think, the concept of being someone, than actually understanding fully how to get there,” Plischke says of the young American’s vaulting ambition.
Having established Felinton as a kind of modern-day, tech-savvy Walter Mitty character, the movie then spends a chunk of time following the boys and their director as they hunker down in Morgantown, trying to stay out of sight until they’re ready for the big reveal. But when it comes, it’s a strangely deflating experience, as the young Germans are confronted by a “villain” who doesn’t even begin to deny what he’s done, but seems incapable of comprehending its wrongness either.
“I think there were always two sides [to how they felt], not just because there are two boys but also in their perception of him,” says Plischke. “On one side, he stole something from them. But also they were fascinated with how he was very confidently telling [the world] about making this movie. So they were sort of starstruck. Everything is a little bit a kaleidoscope of different emotions, I guess.”
Is there a sense, do you think, in which Felinton represents a common malaise in the modern world, in which people clamour for fame but seem unwilling to actually put in the labour that might warrant it?
“Yes, yes. But to be honest, I don’t subscribe to this labelling of someone as not worthy of success if he didn’t do the work,” Plischke says. “If someone is very charismatic, is able to speak well and to initiate this spark and make you be fascinated about this project, this is something Samuel did very well. And this is something that the boys weren’t as … they just thought the film itself will bring them success.”
Plischke isn’t keen to see in Felinton a representative of a generational trend, either.
“This story couldn’t have happened without the internet and the digital world,” he says. “But Samuel is a very specific character who could have been living in the 1950s, travelling to Montebello to meet Dickie Greenleaf.”
Hence The Talented Mr. F. But at least he’s not quite as villainous as Tom Ripley.
“You never know,” Plischke jokes. “But he does have abilities and knowledge and he is mentally cognitive and verbally on such a level. I found a lot of respect for him. I don’t necessarily know that the direction where he put it was the right one, but he does have talent in different fields, and this inspired me very much.”
The Talented Mr F is screening at the German Film Festival. Details: germanfilmfestival.com.au
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