Vera and André are a young entrepreneurial couple who are gearing up to announce their women’s health app. Together they attend a conference to workshop their pitch, before putting it in front of investors. Ahead of their attendance, Vera sees a hypnotherapist in order to cure her smoking, but the hypnotherapist picks up that her fault lies less in her vice but more in her inability to be herself. Vera leaves her appointment and headed to the conference with André, acting more and more inhibited and childish as the days progress.

An increasingly on-edge André is trying to interpret Vera’s increasingly unpredictable behaviour, as she helps herself the bar and trails an imaginary chihuahua. Initially enabling Vera’s quirks, the conference leads start to realise that her behaviour is not in her nature.

Vera is starting to become conscious of the fact that she doesn’t feel comfortable in her false sentiment during the pitch and is wanting take a more authentic approach. Still desperate to impress, André does his best to curtail her trail of unpredictability and take some extreme measures to ensure she doesn’t mess up his all-important pitch, or dissuade the all-important investors.

The chemistry between the two leads, Asta Kamma August and Herbert Nordrum, is a constant power struggle, and they walk a tightrope of mistrust and lost affection to navigate the delivery of this doomed start-up.

The Hypnosis explores how it is in our nature to be untrue to ourselves in our everyday lives, and how leaning into authenticity is just as important as it is difficult.

3 out of 5 stars.