source: ABC
Berlin-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.”
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.
Henneberg was livid.
“I was like, ‘Who is this? What the f*** is going on?’ And then I called Julius again and said: ‘We have another problem.’”
