The Things You Kill (Drama)
Director: Alireza Khatami
Producer: Mariusz Włodarski,Cyriac Auriol,Michael Solomon,Elisa Sepulveda-Ruddoff,Alireza Khatami
Screenwriter: Alireza Khatami
Cinematographer: Bartosz Świniarski
In this cerebral thriller from Sundance Directing Award winner Alireza Khatami, a Turkish university professor sets out to avenge his deceased mother.
Reserved academic Ali is feeling emasculated on several fronts: the course he teaches might be cancelled; he and his wife just can’t seem to conceive; and his father, Hamit, sees him as a failure. On top of this, he learns that his mother has died, and he suspects Hamit may be responsible. So when an opportunity to exact revenge presents itself by way of a strangely audacious drifter, how can Ali refuse?
Much like with his previous feature, Terrestrial Verses (co-directed with Ali Asgari, MIFF 2023), writer/director Khatami keeps audiences on their toes by toying with conventions and precedents – here, evoking Iranian realism, the surrealist twists of David Lynch, the existentialist thrust of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the intrigue of Alfred Hitchcock. Premiering to acclaim at Sundance, where Khatami took home the World Cinema Dramatic section’s directing prize, the film is a masterwork of finely calibrated suspense and characterisation, while the cinematography by Bartosz Świniarski (Silent Land, MIFF 2022) injects the landscape with both allure and alienating menace. Shapeshifting and sure to enthral, The Things You Kill is a provocative exploration of culpability, patriarchy, and the dark nooks and crannies of the bruised human psyche.
“Absorbing, suspenseful, and deeply moving – a case study in how to make an effective psychological thriller.” – Vulture