Hysteria (HSBC German Film Festival 2025) - Film Review

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Wed 30 Apr 2025 - Mon 19 May 2025

Direct from the 2025 Berlinale, Hysteria is 104 minutes long, Directed by Mehmet Akif B fcy fckaalay, and stars Devrim Lingnau, Mehdi Meskar, Serkan Kaya, Nicolette Krebitz, Aziz c7apkurt, and Nazmi Kirik. Hysteria begins with a film within a film. Turkish-German filmmaker Yigit (Serkan Kaya) is making a movie about a traumatic incident that happened in Solingen, Germany in 1993 when four young men with neo-Nazi ties set fire to a house. Five members of a Turkish family died in the fire. It was a violent gesture of xenophobia against immigrants, who were German citizens. Yigit shoots the scene of the fire and the cleanup, using non-actors from a refugee centre.

During filming, Said (Mehdi Meskar), a young Turkish man, is overwhelmed by what has happened in reality, and unleashes his response to the incident by destroying and kicking the debris around him, before he's pulled back, and breaks down and cries. What they find in the debris, a burnt copy of the Quran in a reconstructed arson becomes the fuel for dangerous misunderstandings and outrage about the ethics of staging sacred trauma. Discussions amongst the men performing in the film ensue, questioning why the director would burn the Quran - what was his reason for making the film, and who was it being made for? Accusations and questions begin to build in the mind, as the plot develops. Mustafa (Aziz Capkurt) one of the actors/non-actors who dabbled in filmmaking himself, claims to not be religious and doesn't add to the outrage about the Quran. He points out to Said that in the movies, immigrants like themselves can only be portrayed as victims or terrorists. In the midst of it all, someone puts through an anonymous complaint about the burning of the Quran with the Ministry of Culture.


Part of the crew, Elif (Devrim Lingnau) is a Turkish-German assistant to the director and his wife Lilith (Nicolette Krebitz). She doesn't easily reveal her Turkish half and passes as white. At the end of the shoot for the day, she is tasked with transporting the actors and returning the footage to the director's home, because the driver Magid (Nazmi Kirik) refuses to drive a car that's carrying footage of a burnt Quran. Elif is staying at the director's house for a few days while he and his wife are away, but loses her keys to the flat and gets a locksmith to let her in by claiming she lived in the apartment. When asked for papers to prove it, she claims it was lost along with her belongings. In the course of the evening, as Elif has put out posters for the lost keys to be returned, she gets a message to say her keys have been found and that the caller at the other end would return it. When the caller/stranger doesn't arrive with the keys after Elif has given out the address, panic sets in when she realises the caller now has the key and the address, and could turn up at any time. Feeling unsafe, Said who seems to have a little crush on Elif comes along to keep her company and make her feel safe. When Yigit and Lilith return home and ask for the film, it's nowhere to be found.

Suspicion reins and tensions build, and it doesn't help that Elif has concealed a few truths, piling lie upon lie because she doesn't want to appear incompetent to Yigit and Lilith. She gets new keys cut so as not to reveal she lost the keys, and getting the locksmith to let her in supports her concealment of having lost the keys. It all comes out in the final act in Yigit and Lilith's apartment when Elif, Said, Mustafa, and Majid get together and return, initially with Elif accusing the director and his wife, because she has proof it wasn't any of the actors who stole the film. She tells them she had footage on her laptop which she used as a spy-cam, of an intruder and the director, whom she accuses is one and the same, coming into her room. Everyone is pointing fingers at each other, with accusations flying. The director is accused of being the one who stole his own film for an insurance claim, and his return accusation is easily lodged on those easiest of all to blame, the immigrant actors. Elif comes under suspicion as well as all her lies in order to appear competent, and catches up with her. Like the boy who cried wolf, no one believes her. It becomes a whodunit where everyone is a suspect.


If you've watched interviews with the director Mehmet Akif B fcy fckaalay online about his film Hysteria, you'll note that he's very much into what he calls images. Images so strong that we sometimes don't see each other as people - images that make it impossible to talk to each other. Images about a person that's not necessarily created by them, but by others. He admits to a preoccupation with images of Muslims, who for the most part, do not produce those images themselves how these false images create a society that cannot communicate with each other anymore, and what it means for the community, and how it creates political hysteria. Mehmet portrays this in the movie, where in the end everyone is talking, but they're not talking about the complexity of the topic, just attacking and talking about the others. One of the messages he tries to put across is the migrant issue - one of being seen as victims or terrorists, not the humans that they are - and this lack of communication and blaming, leading to hysteria. He is deeply interested in this development of German society.

Unfortunately, the film does not seem to have a clear direction, nor does it carry out the task the director expects of it. It is instead bogged down by a convoluted, undeveloped plot, interspersed with footage that begs more questions than answers, doesn't always hit the mark, and is quite ho-hum at times. It's like the director got carried away with trying to throw so many points at the audience, that it lost the plot and gets caught up in its own intricate web, undeveloped motivations, and loose ends. There's a lack of clarity and a political thriller this is not. Calling it a suspenseful behind-the-scenes conspiracy thriller only serves to set itself up for failure, as there's no evidence of it. Sitting through this mostly drab premise, the small glimmer of light comes from the performance of Devrim Lingnau as Elif. You might remember her from 'The Empress'. Her strength is in her minimal artistic expression that speaks without words. Her expression says it all when she comes across as being a little ditzy when she loses the key, or she loses her concentration for that moment when she's driving tired or gets hysterical as she lets out a guttural scream when she suspects someone is in the house. Though she manages to create some of the fear and tension required, none of it is political, nor adds strength to the message the direction is trying to get across. You'll no doubt have your own opinion, and everyone's views on the film will undoubtedly make for interesting conversation in the aftermath. But for me, it does not live up to its title. There was more paranoia than hysteria, except on conclusion, when it redeems itself a little by capturing your interest with horrifying hysteria.



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