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story identification - Can you name this sci fi film that is similar to The Matrix?


In this movie there are scientists who (spoilers ahead)



...are creating a simulation. One scientist starts seeing odd looking characters but no one else sees them. He asks around and more and more characters are missing or don't know about the characters in the story he knows about.
He finds out that he is part of a simulation. He finds out that the characters only he remembers have been deleted. He also finds out that there are characters from his own simulation that have broken free of his simulation and are in his world.




Hints: I remember this being an older film (70's?); it might have been foreign film possibly with subtitles (not Hollywood); it might have been part of the Criterion collection; I'm pretty sure I streamed it from Hulu. Sorry, I can't remember more details.



Answer



"Welt am Draht" (German for "World on a Wire"), based on the book Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye, also published under the title Counterfeit World. Per Wikipedia:



At the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science ("Institut für Kybernetik und Zukunftsforschung, IKZ"), a new supercomputer hosts a simulation program that includes an artificial world with over 9,000 "identity units" who live as human beings, unaware that their world is just a simulacron.



Re: "characters only he knows have been deleted", also from Wikipedia:



His successor, Dr. Fred Stiller, has a discussion with Günther Lause, the security adviser of the institute, when the latter suddenly disappears without trace, before passing on Vollmer's secret to Stiller. More mysterious still is the fact that none of the other IKZ employees seem to have any memory of Lause.




And the escape of some identity units to his world:



In an attempt to become a real person, Einstein switches his mind into Walfang's body while the latter is in contact with the simulated world.



And it's in German, from 1973.


This story has been previously asked about and answered successfully here.


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