Two German film students track down their stolen movie in new doco

After their film was stolen, Julius Drost and Moritz Henneberg immediately saw the cinematic potential of their story. (Supplied) Link copiedShareShare articleBerlin-based film students Julius Drost and Moritz Henneberg spent thousands of hours crafting their adorable animated short, Butty, depicting the travails of a cute but clumsy cleaning robot who's thrown out on the street after one messy malfunction too many. So when Butty was selected for an Oscars-qualifying animation festival in Bulgaria, they were utterly ecstatic. Sadly, the celebration was short-lived. Drost and Henneberg were booted out, and the short disqualified because it was already online. "I was in shock, so I called Julius," Henneberg recalls of the panic that ensued. "I did some research, and the movie had been leaked. It was all over the internet, on a variety of weird streaming platforms. It was kind of like Searching for Sugar Man, where he doesn't realise that his songs are all over South Africa." Butty the robot, the star of Julius Drost and Moritz Henneberg's stolen short film. (Supplied) The short had been renamed T130. One scene had been chopped and new music added. An American film student, Samuel Felinton, was credited as writer, director, animator and producer. He appeared on a raft of talk shows, taking credit for the film's astonishing festival run, during which it accrued a bunch of awards. "I was like, 'Who is this? What the f*** is going on?' And then I called Julius again and said, 'We have another problem'." The true scale of the disaster is unfurled in the equal-parts bamboozling and thoroughly entertaining documentary The Talented Mr F, screening nationally as part of the German Film Festival. It all feels like a bad dream, now, to Drost. However, he remembers feeling far too exhausted to cope when Henneberg first broke the bizarre news. "Of course I was shocked, but I was also very fed up," he says. "I was so tired, because we'd just finished the film. It took two years, and I was like, 'It's done. I'm out now. I'm gonna have a social life and just chill'." Chilling was off the table as the pair struggled to wrest control of their labour back from this shameless American pretender, Felinton, whose name was listed on multiple business ventures and who had posted many vlogs. Henneberg and Drost travelled to the US in their search for the stranger who stole their short film. (Supplied) Deciding to lawyer up, they realised there was something in their favour to prove their authorship: the fridge was full of German brands and the plug points European, not American. Funnily enough, that's a blooper in the film; Butty is set in an America city based on Denver. "We figured it out, one year too late," Drost says, laughing. "We hadn't really thought about that when we were filling the scene up.'' That slip-up was the least of their troubles. Litigation isn't a particularly affordable route for uni students, especially with no guarantee they'd win, let alone any insight into how long it would take. They were looking at six figures to find out. "It could take two to three years," Drost says, his eyes boggling. Instead, they decided to beat Felinton at his own game. Embarking on a documentary that would expose his fraud, the filmmakers enlisted the aid of director Igor Plischke, who would trace their adventure as they headed to the US, planning to confront Felinton in his home of Morgantown in rural West Virginia. Drost and Henneberg also brought in a stateside filmmaker, W Ian Ross, to ease the way. "He's from New York, so he knew how to get to Morgantown, had connections and knew where to get technical stuff," Drost says of their point man. "Turns out, he was an important guy not only on the production side, but also in how we handled the situation." Ross's breezy confidence meant he was more at ease hitting up strangers. Samuel Felinton, the person at the centre of the mystery in Igor Pilschke's film, The Talented Mr F. (Supplied) He also coached budding detectives Drost and Henneberg on how best to handle their fateful meeting with Felinton. "At first, we were really excited," Henneberg recalls. "It was sort of like meeting a celebrity. We felt we knew Sam so well, through his blogs. We'd studied his life, knew who his closest friends were. We even walked his way to school via Google street view." "We tried to imagine what ways this confrontation could go," Drost says. "Maybe he could get really angry. We even found out how tall he is and how much he weighs, and he was clearly bigger than us." Henneberg was very conscious he and Drost were outmatched on that front. While we won't spoil what happens next, it's fair to say that the story gets even weirder. "I mean, there was maybe some answers, but there were more questions," Henneberg chuckles. "Sam feels like an American politician." Their travails haven't put Henneberg and Drost off, with the former now pursuing documentary filmmaking

Two German film students track down their stolen movie in new doco

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