Teddy (2005)

Directed by: André Bergs | 3 minutes | short movie

‘Teddy’ (2006) is a dialogue-free, short study of an elderly man who can no longer keep up with his surroundings. Teddy is a middle-aged man in a green raincoat who watches his bustling environment from a bench. He sees the world go by at a killer pace. The traffic, the people; he can’t keep up with it all. Next to him on the bench is a man smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper, but when Teddy tries to get in touch with him, the man would rather leave than chat. He immediately gets up and walks away, his footsteps sounding faster and more hollow, and in no time he is lost in the crowd again.

Teddy decides to get up and joins a group of people who want to cross the street. He hopes to make eye contact with someone, but everyone looks straight ahead, ignoring Teddy. When the light turns green, everyone crosses the street at lightning speed. The slow Teddy, however, hears the impatiently roaring engines next to him the moment he puts his foot on the road and has to get away. Across the street, he finally finds someone who lives at the same pace as him. It is a small child playing with a ball in an empty parking lot. The girl sees him and the two begin to pass the ball to each other. Teddy is about to throw the ball back when he sees an adult figure around the girl. The child and her mother slowly approach Teddy. Before he realizes what has happened she is already standing in front of him and poor Teddy gets a big bang from the seething mother, who immediately takes her child with her. Teddy is alone again, there is no other option to continue his lonely journey.

‘Teddy’ only lasts three minutes, but manages to create enough effect as a mood piece in that short time. The story is touching, sincere and recognizable. The film was initially the graduation project of director André Bergs, but he eventually managed to make it his official debut. Bergs won two prizes for this film at the French Festival International du Film d’Aubagne in 2006. The characters are simple but effectively drawn. Teddy and the girl are the only ones with human features, the other figures are modeled after toys, with buttons for eyes and long slits for mouths, clearly hiding a lot of anger. The backgrounds have some surrealistic features, but nevertheless form a credible backdrop for this touching indictment against the ever-raging society, where no one seems to want to take time for anyone else anymore.