Hysteria

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Canadian Premiere

Thirty years after a racially motivated arson kills five immigrants in Germany, a filmmaker decides to reenact a staged version of the incident and its aftermath for his latest project. However, when a burned Quran is found on set, tensions rise between the filmmaker and the refugees recruited as extras for the shoot. As the conflict escalates, with recriminations flying back and forth, a young assistant, Elif (Devrim Lingnau), finds herself drawn into an ever-widening web of paranoia and conspiracy.

Written and directed by Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, Hysteria is a sinuous, superbly plotted mystery-thriller, replete with unexpected twists. A pitch-perfect study of the dynamics of social power, it uses its film-within-a-film conceit to reflect on its own position within the larger film festival ecosystem. “They make films just so Europe can have a clean conscience,” one of the extras remarks about the project’s director. Whatever else it may be, this genre-bending effort will challenge any such expectations.

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