The lookout of the Titanic can't live with the guilt after surviving the disaster.


FRED is used with permission from Franklin and Marchetta. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/fredthefilm.


In the late 1960s, Fred was a solemn man in his late 70s with no friends and family left. Living in his brother-in-law's house until forced to leave, all he has are his memories and emotions. Unfortunately, many of these are sad and harrowing, because Fred was a lookout onboard the RMS Titanic and was the one who spotted the iceberg that fatally sunk the ship in 1912.

His mind takes him back to that time, to both the trauma of the disaster itself and the coldness and blame he faced as one of the few survivors on the crew. As time goes on, these memories grow more vivid, forcing Fred to a breaking point and leaving him to make a devastating decision.

Directed by Bjorn Franklin and Johnny Marchetta, this lyrical dramatic short takes a small but pivotal historical figure as its jumping point to examine the toll that unaddressed trauma can have on a person's life. Frederick Fleet was a lookout on the RMS Titanic, whose sinking was one of the most startling disasters in history. Fleet survived, and the narrative chronicles what happened to Fleet after the historical sinking with beautiful craftsmanship and enormous sensitivity.

The narrative opens with a young Fred being interrogated about what happened. The conversation itself is cold, with his questioner being both matter-of-fact and insensitive as he questions the young man, forcing him to relive harrowing details without much compassion. Meanwhile, in the present day, the elderly Fred goes about his life, haunted by those memories.

Scenes from Fred's past are often vividly rendered and feel more concrete, while the section with the older Fred feels more fractured and impressionistic, with destabilizing shots and image compositions that mirror the way that memory and trauma keep seeping into Fred's present. What unites past and present, visually, are the dark, moody colors and the richly textured cinematography, as if these haunting flashbacks etch themselves deeper into Fred's psyche each time they play in his mind.

As the younger and older versions of Fred, actors Tom Brittney and Maxton Beesley, Sr. both evoke a man torn up inside by the scale of the disaster he was an intimate witness of. As a young man, he's frightened and alone in bearing the grief of what he saw, and as an elderly one, he's weighed down almost unbearably with trauma and survivor's guilt. Fred sees no way out of this mental imprisonment, with no outlet to find relief and no one to offer comfort, solidarity or empathy. With such a bleak landscape within and around him, he is driven to a devastating choice.

Evocative, richly impressionistic and melancholic, FRED is a small but indelible portrait of a lost and troubled soul. The real Frederick Fleet suffered a childhood of emotional instability and deprivation, and when combined with the trauma of the Titanic, it led to a lifetime struggle with depression that culminated with his self-inflicted death in 1965. (Fred maintained during questioning that if he and his fellow lookout were given binoculars, they might have spotted the iceberg sooner and averted the disaster.) Though Titanic is from a past era of history, Fred's story nevertheless has modern resonance in terms of contemporary discussions about mental health, making for a vividly realized parable about the dangers of ignoring psychological distress and letting those suffering from it languish alone.