The Wire

A new film explores religious and ethnic tensions within Germany through the staging of a film that goes horrendously wrong when a copy of the Koran is accidentally burnt. The film Hysteria is a thriller in which competing interpretations to what happened builds up suspense about the motives of the different cast members from different cultural backgrounds and beliefs.

Stephen Hill asked the film’s director Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay whether the film is reflection on how populism in the Western World has corroded the trust between people and their institutions.