Hysteria

A group of young, passionate theatre makers have just been presented with an opportunity that could change their lives forever. A huge company in the UK have invited them to pitch a large-scale work that would see them go from making theatre for audiences of 100 people, to making a show that plays to more than 1,000 people a night. This group of aspirational artists have always been driven by hopes and dreams, but their dreams have never been this big.

The theme of Romeo and Juliet is the starting point from which the film spins a web of several stories. A love story between a boy and a girl whose families are Algerian: they are young, beautiful and they are trying to build a family and a social life in France. They love each other, and yet conflicts, family pressure and contradicting desires alternately tear them apart and unite them. The story of Romeo and Juliet, minus death.

A group of actors in Madrid are cast in a theatre show conceived as a dance marathon and as an unscripted competition. ‘Malditos’ follows their drifting between success, failure, fame and self-realization, interweaving non-fiction interventions and staged representations, constantly blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality.

Documentary on the history of Ryhmäteatteri theatre company.

Artistic director of the National Theater Eric de Vroedt writes and directs a performance about his own mother Winnie, who passed away in 2020. This piece, titled The Century of My Mother, is a family story about the migration from the Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands. It is De Vroedt's way of examining the relationship with his mother and not having to say goodbye to her yet: 'I can let her live on stage, but when the curtain falls, when the play is completely finished, then she is really dead'.

Five young Ukrainians discuss life following the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Not all fought in the Russian-Ukrainian war, but it, regardless, shattered their life plans. Representing 'Generation Maidan', they face the question of how to cope with experiences of violence, how to go on. A local theatre director produces Hamlet, wherein they can use Shakespeare’s tragic character as a mirror and face their traumas onstage. For them, 'to be or not to be' is not simply text but an existential dilemma with no clear answer.

Firas, Jallow and Batoul just arrived in Berlin. They meet one another in a theatre group. They are searching for the good life in Germany - yet things don’t turn out the way they hoped. Through video letters, they reveal their deepest emotions to their families and friends back in their war-torn or poverty-stricken home countries.

This documentary shows how one of the biggest youth theatres in Europe dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.