The Things You Kill

The Things You Kill is a 2025 mystery film written and directed by Alireza Khatami. The film stars Ekin Koç as a university professor who solicits his gardener to seek vengeance after the suspicious death of his mother. Erkan Kolçak Köstendil, Hazar Ergüçlü, and Ercan Kesal provide supporting roles. Khatami, Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff, Cyriac Auriol, Mariusz Włodarsk, and Michael Solomon co-produced the movie.

The film premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

Ali, a Turkish-born university professor teaching in the United States, is enraged by the suspicious circumstances of his ailing mother's death in Turkey. During his grieving process, Ali reveals his resentment for his estranged father and befriends a gardener named Reza whom he enlists to avenge his mother's death.

• Ekin Koç as Ali, a Turkish university professor teaching in the United States
• Erkan Kolçak Köstendil as Reza, a gardener that Ali befriends
• Hazar Ergüçlü as Hazar, Ali's wife
• Ercan Kesal as Ali's father

Iranian filmmaker Alireza Khatami wrote, directed, and co-produced The Things You Kill; it was his third feature film following Oblivion Verses (2017) and Terrestrial Verses (2023, which he co-directed with Ali Asgari). Khatami cited the work of David Lynch as one of his primary inspirations for the movie, saying that he was "in awe" of the types of unorthodox stylistic choices made by Lynch that are uncommon in Eastern filmmaking.^[1]

Khatami characterized the script as a work of autofiction, telling Variety that he "[doesn't] even know how to show this to [his] family because 70% of it is based on shared experiences". Khatami also stated that he hoped to undermine "what the audience expects from a 'brown filmmaker'", calling the first half of the film a Trojan horse.^[1]

The film was co-produced by Khatami through the studio Tell Tall Tale, Elisa Sepulveda-Ruddoff from the French studio Fulgurance, Cyriac Auriol of Remora Films (France), Mariusz Włodarski of Lava Films (Poland), and Michael Solomon of Band With Pictures (Canada). Marta Gmosińska, Cenk Ünalerzen, and film star Ekin Koç also contributed to the production through the Turkish studio Sineaktif.The film received support from several institutions: Eurimages, the Polish Film Institute, Telefilm Canada, Arte Cofinova, World Cinema Fund, Torino Feature Lab, and the Île-de-France government.^[2]

In May 2024, during post-production, Best Friend Forever acquired the international distribution rights to The Things You Kill, and Le Pacte acquired the rights for distribution in France.^[2] The film premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 24 and will make its Sundance digital debut on January 30.^[3]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 21 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Carlos Aguilar of Variety gave the film a positive review, calling it an "astutely written exercise in paying attention to how one is perceived and using that knowledge to rewrite one’s own narrative".^[4] Ryan Lattanzio of IndieWire gave the film an A- grade, writing that it is "like a bad, sweat-breaking dream that leaves you dazed and feverish — and a black-hearted gaze into the poison patriarchy oozes into men’s veins just as much as women".^[5]

Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter was critical of the film, calling it "stale" and writing that "there’s something about The Things You Kill that ultimately leaves the viewer cold, even if all the strange and awful stuff Ali goes through leads him to finally open up and, perhaps, lighten up".^[6]

• The Things You Kill at IMDb