A study in humanity might be one good way of summarising Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay’s 2025 film Hysteria. Where is the line between a righteous act and a performative spectacle? Büyükatalay attempts to answer the question when a dishonourable burning of a Quran for a shoot sparks conflict between parties, and Hysteria becomes a meta film about racism… about a film about racism. Aziz Çapkurt’s character Mustafa makes his point: “Yiğit, or directors like Yiğit. They make films just so Europe can have a clean conscience.”

Student Elif (Devrim Lingnau) working on the project as a second assistant director idolizes Yiğit (Serkan Kaya), and ends up at the center of conflict for most of its premise. Büyükatalay had previously worked with Lingnau on short Immaculata (2024), though she may not be the most captivating of protagonists. This isn’t entirely the actress’s fault; her character isn’t particularly fleshed out. But her expressions are too often stale for a film that’s reliant on its dialogue and characters. Hysteria doesn’t attempt to do anything beyond its core purpose, pulling viewers out of the melodrama in favour of an extremely blunt message that would have the same effect if it were a documentary film.

“Paranoia” might’ve been a better name, because no one is ever really hysterical in this film (or the bulk of it). 2024 was a fabulous year for suspense and horror, and though Hysteria is plainly a drama and doesn’t belong to the latter, it scrapes against the absolute edge of thriller. Things start getting more suspenseful at the half hour mark, where Elif’s paranoia begins to creep in. These sequences, accompanied with nothing beyond a slightly menacing string score, speed up in occurrence as the film goes on. It’s nothing extreme like Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 film Mother!, but we begin to understand Elif’s mind and why she makes such irrational decisions amidst her spirals of doubt. The sheer mess, the dividing opinions, and the betrayals involved when people simply won’t communicate properly are well presented in Hysteria.

The issue with a film that decides it’s too mature for a proper score, or anything noteworthy cinematographically, is that its dialogue and content have to be so impressive it doesn’t need any decorative ribbons. This is where Hysteria will divide viewers; if you have an interest in the subject matter, it’ll survive the trip of your attention span. While the dialogue isn’t anything incredible, there are a handful of scenes involving microaggressions that make it a respectable handling of its contents however.

There’s some very on the nose irony that comes with the film’s instantaneous ascension from 1 to 100 on the drama scale in its final sequence. While Kaya was probably the most impressive actor up to this point, everyone involved in this last scene shines in their moment, truly crafting a believable mass hysteria and justifying the name of the film. Hysteria gains its worthiness for that last sequence alone: serving as a reward for those who were able to sit through its mostly drab premise.

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Written by Maddie Armstrong

Image courtesy of Filmfaust

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