Cold is a strange thing to build a story around. In Ferdinand Ehrhardt’s DETLEV, it becomes almost a physical presence. The title character is always freezing, and every night he returns to the same gas station for the same comforting ritual: a Toast Hawaii, heated until it becomes almost unbearably hot. Rather than eating it, he presses his face into it, searching for warmth wherever he can find it.
The premise is funny, unsettling, and more than a little ridiculous. But Ehrhardt never lets the absurdity become the whole point. Beneath Detlev’s peculiar routine is a man struggling with a much deeper kind of coldness: the loneliness he has kept hidden for far too long.
A Tiny World With a Lot of Texture
Made as Ehrhardt’s diploma film at the Animationsinstitut of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, DETLEV was nearly three years in the making, with more than 40 people contributing to its miniature world. The film uses classical puppet animation, with silicone puppets built by Arne Hain and physical sets designed by production designer Céline Ahlbrecht.
The environments have an almost live-action quality. Forced perspective gives the lonely parking lot an expansive scale. The lighting and cinematography make the miniature world feel tangible rather than toy-like. Ehrhardt also embraces practical effects wherever possible, using only a single green-screen shot throughout the film.
That physicality is central to the experience. You can almost feel the chill in Detlev’s trembling body, the fluorescent harshness of the gas station, and the heat of the food he uses as temporary comfort. Even the sound design contributes to that sensation, with his dry, rhythmic breathing turning his shivering into something increasingly uncomfortable.
When the Joke Starts to Hurt
What makes DETLEV linger is the way its central gag gradually changes meaning. At first, a man warming his face with a Toast Hawaii is simply bizarre. As his routine begins to unravel, however, the ritual becomes a physical expression of his need for connection.
Ehrhardt balances comedy with genuine vulnerability, allowing the strange and the deeply human to exist in the same frame. The result is a film that feels tactile, awkward, funny, and quietly heartbreaking.
For Ehrhardt, the experience ultimately became a lesson in trusting other people and recognizing what can happen when creative work becomes truly collective. DETLEV may begin with a man searching for warmth in an unexpected place, but it ends somewhere much more familiar: with the realization that sometimes the warmth we need cannot be found in an object at all.
