Johan Grimonprez's ingenious documentary/fiction hybrid a meditation on identity, filmmaking, power and paranoia looks at Alfred Hitchcock's late 50s and early 60s films against the climate of Cold War-era political anxiety. Using a meticulous array of archive footage as well as a story by novelist Tom McCarthy (Remainder) about Hitchcock encountering his double during production of the Birds Grimonprez traces the global rise of fear as a commodity, examining modern history through the lens of mass media, advertising and Hollywood.