Hysteria

Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay's 2025 German film takes place during the shooting of a film about the 1993 arson attack in Solingen. A burnt Quran is found on set and an argument breaks out within the crew about what it means. The idea is whose representation this is. The production is telling the story of immigrants, but the people making the decisions are not them; through a small incident the question of who has the right to say what spreads across the whole set. The narrative uses the thriller form. The question of who did what proceeds like a detective story, but the film is not interested in finding a culprit; it is interested in how each person defends their own position. Büyükatalay had taken up the Turkish community in Germany before. Who it's for: those interested in contemporary German cinema and debates about representation. Who it's not for: viewers sensitive to racist violence; the film takes a real attack and the desecration of religious objects as its direct subject.