Bye Bear
2023 · 11m · Germany
Directed by Jan Bitzer
Genres: animation, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Five robot friends gather at a run-down roadside motel to wish farewell to one of their own, who is about to transform and leave for good.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A farewell ritual between robot friends should be maudlin garbage, but Bitzer commits so hard to the sincerity of it—treating mechanical obsolescence like grief—that it becomes genuinely unsettling; the surrealism sneaks up on you because it's not trying to be weird, just honest.
The film positions itself thoughtfully within the tradition of animated elegies (think Takahata's softer registers), and the motel setting—that liminal American nowhere—grounds what could be precious into something formally austere and genuinely moving.
The decision to animate these robots with such tender, almost human micro-expressions creates the entire emotional weight; a lesser filmmaker makes this sci-fi concept, but Bitzer's choice to let silence and small gestural shifts carry the goodbye makes it break your heart on a shoestring budget.