15/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay's anticipated second feature deals with the important issues of the position and representation of migrants in Europe, but leaves the viewer confused

The second feature by German filmmaker Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, who dazzled at the 2019 Berlinale with his debut Oray [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay
film profile], continues his exploration of the theme of the representation of migrant minorities in Europe. Hysteria [+see also:
interview: Devrim Lingnau
interview: Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay
film profile], which just premiered at the 75th Berlinale in the Panorama section, is a political thriller centred on a high-tension film shoot, but this meaty, topical material unfortunately gets bogged down in an unnecessarily convoluted plot.

We follow Elif (EFP Shooting Star Devrim Lingnau), an intern on the production of a film recounting a real-life 30-year-old racist incident in the city of Solingen (which came up in the news again last summer for a similar reason), when an immigrant flat was burned down. The power couple, producer Lilith (steely Nicolette Krebitz, also seen in festival opener The Light [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) and director Yiğit (Serkan Kaya), hire a group of migrants from a refugee centre to play cleaners in a scene. One of them, the young Arab man Said (played by the charismatic Mehdi Meskar), discovers a burned Quran and goes berserk on camera. This makes for fantastically authentic footage and a scandal, with the Ministry of Culture getting involved, but was it planned by Yiğit all along? 

This doesn’t turn out to be the key issue, but rather one of many instances of a lack of clarity in this film. A counterargument can be made in a wider thematic sense: the representation of immigrants of Muslim and/or African background in Europe as “the Other”, who in a film can only be a victim or a terrorist, involves a jungle of ideas, ethical views, philosophical and sociological readings, none of which hold a definite answer. As one of the refugees, Kurdish theatre director Mustafa (Aziz Çapkurt, suitably intense) says of Yiğit, "I know this kind of director. They make films to keep Europe's conscience clear." But this salient point doesn't ring as true when put in such a didactic manner. 

As Elif is taken by devout and shaken production driver Majid (Nazmi Kırık, the protagonist of one of the film's strongest scenes) to drop off the extras in the refugee centre and get the tapes from the shoot to the couple’s flat, she realises she has lost the keys to their home. Leaving an ad on the board in the centre, she enables a potentially dangerous stranger to get both the keys and the address. After we discover that she herself is the daughter of an immigrant, an “invisible migrant” with her clean European looks, it brings us closer to what we assume is the film’s point. 

The tapes go missing after Elif installs a spy cam on her laptop in Lilith and Yiğit’s flat, afraid of the stranger. This produces two videos, only one of which is conclusive, but the characters’ lines and actions don’t seem to support what we saw;  as a result, the cognitive level on which the film functions as relates to the information available to the audience is undefined. 

In the final, intense scene, many issues get addressed but seem to get muddled even further: who is lying to whom and why? Are some of them lying to themselves and/or the audience? Did Yiğit steal the tapes himself and was it an insurance scam, or was it Said or Majid? What are really Lilith’s vested interests? 

The film’s accomplished elements, from the elaborate mise-en-scène and strong visual style to the cello-driven suspenseful score, are offset by this problem that looms large over the picture. Büyükatalay doesn’t make it clear that the point might precisely be that there are no easy answers. He handles religious, philosophical and political issues with great sensitivity and care, which unfortunately cannot be said of the plot.  

Hysteria was produced by Cologne-based outfit filmfaust and is sold internationally by Pluto Film.