Overview
- Pathé recruited 30 volunteers for an experiment that will take place at its Buitenhof cinema in The Hague on November 9 and will be led by hypnotherapist Victor Kraemer.
- Participants completed individual online hypnosis sessions and will receive a further group session immediately before a screening of one of four films: The Matrix, Se7en, La La Land, or Interstellar.
- Organisers call the effort exploratory and say there is no guarantee it will work, because controlled studies show hypnosis sometimes makes details harder to recall only in highly susceptible people and those memories often return after suggestions end.
- Coverage notes possible minor harms such as anxiety, emotional distress, and sleep disturbance cited by medical sources, and reporting has not described formal clinical oversight beyond informed consent.
- Pathé presents the trial as a way to revive the first‑viewing experience and to experiment with new cinema offerings, with results from the November 9 screening and any wider plans still pending.