An Interview with Alireza Khatami

The slippery, slow-burn drama, The Things You Kill, is an intense psychological thriller set in Turkey and written and directed by American Iranian filmmaker, Alireza Khatami (Terrestrial Verses [2023]).

The story centres around Ali (Ekin Koç), who is having some personal and professional crises. First, Ali argues with his father Hamit (Ercan Kesal), about how to care for his ailing mother, Anne (Guliz Sirinyan). Meanwhile, Ali and his wife, Hazar (Hazar Ergüçlü), have been trying to conceive; he is reluctant to tell her he has a low sperm count. Ali also teaches part-time at a local university, but his class is likely being cancelled for next semester. As if all these troubles are not enough, Ali gets news that Anne has died. He soon investigates her death, thinking it may have been an act of violence perpetrated by his father. 

The Things You Kill gets knottier when Ali meets Reza (Erkan Kolçcak Köstendil) at his countryside garden and gets him to help exact punishment on Hamit. Khatami’s film makes a narrative shift here that prompts viewers to reevaluate Ali’s character and his interactions with his wife, family members – his siblings Nesrin (Sleen Kurtaran) and Meriem (Idil Engindeniz) – and others, such as Hamit’s girlfriend, Pervin (Ipek Türktan).

Khatami is very shrewd in his storytelling, opening his film with the description of a dream that is shot behind a window, suggesting the layers of truth and reality. There are many scenes in enclosed, claustrophobic spaces that may contribute to the sense that a noose is tightening around Ali’s neck. But there are an equal number of scenes set in the vast countryside where Ali experiences freedom away from the oppressive society. The dichotomy at play here is reflected not just in the excellent visual compositions, but also in Ali’s character. He keeps secrets and hides the truth from others to break a cycle of violence. He thinks he is doing good, but as events culminate, Ali faces internal conflicts, lying to himself. Things, Khatami’s film suggests, are not as black and white as they seem. 

The Things You Kill won the Directing Award in the World Cinema Dramatic category at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. At the conclusion of the fest, Khatami spoke with Senses of Cinema about his astonishing film.

– G.M.K

What prompted you to tell this story and tell it in the deliberate way you did? It has a dreamlike quality to it. There is symbolism, emotion, and a sense of folklore. Is this film an allegory? 

I think I will answer parts of the question. The film provides multiple layers. There is an allegorical level, a symbolic level, and a psychological level. More than anything, this is the stuff of a nightmare. To me, this is a prologue. It begins with the knock at the door.

The Things You Kill

It took me 8 years to make the film. I didn’t want to make a film that expires in one view or two years from now. It’s a very personal story to me. Almost 70% of the film is based on what happened to me and my family. Thankfully, my mum is alive. I have not killed my dad. The very structure of it is based on truth. I wanted my own account. It’s a therapy in a way; it’s walking out of a nightmare. It is a way of looking at my own self and listing the work that I still need to do. It is a requiem for a man in a patriarchy. We often see what patriarchy does to women, but we rarely look at what it does to men. While men are the privileged gender in the patriarchy, we too are subjected to this violence. There was an immense pain in me that I had to open up. I didn’t know any other way to achieve this. I’m a filmmaker. If therapy wasn’t so expensive, I would go to therapy. But it is cheaper to make a film! 

Ali feels betwixt and between – he feels left out by his family, he lies to his wife, and is the subject of rumours at work. What can you say about his character? He is intriguing because he can be stubborn and difficult and then he becomes emboldened in a very unusual way. 

Ali studied in the U.S. for 14 years. He has gone as far as he could. He thinks, I’m a liberated man. I am a feminist. I seek equality for everyone. Slowly, we realise he is neck deep in this structure of patriarchy. His ultimate fear is that he is a copy of his father without knowing it.

At the beginning of the film, there is no one who is likeable. As the old saying goes, “Every saint has a history, and every criminal has a future.” Once you know someone up close there are so many shades of grey. That’s why my camera is way back. It would be too uncomfortable to be so close. 

Ali wakes up and realises he is living in a nightmare. But the way I’ve written and executed it with the help of my cast and crew, it is very grounded. Many people who have seen the film mentioned David Lynch. It’s such a big shoe to fill and I will wear it as clumsy as it is. Someone said about my first film, Oblivion Verses, it is as if Kiarostami took ecstasy. This film, they said, “If Lynch was ever sober…” To me, the nightmare doesn’t exist on another level; it is already here. In Turkey, the number of women being murdered is crazy. That’s one example of patriarchy and violence. This is a nightmare we live in every day and pretend everything is OK. But I’m getting off topic. 

Ali, at the start of the film, is having a rough time with his mother’s situation and fighting with Hamit, getting bad news about his fertility, and then having job stress. It’s death by a thousand papercuts…

That’s life. But once you confront it, you realise you are dealing with this level of violence every day. Sometimes the violence is funny – the way Ali is trying to bribe the administration for a well. It’s a joke, but that’s another level of violence. 

The female characters are not liberated women. At first glance they might look strong, but they all have such shades of grey. Like Nasrim saying what she does to Ali at their mother’s grave – this is such an act of aggression. She is provoking him! The women also have a very dark side to them. Like the mother saying, “Cow Doctor” [about Ali’s wife] no matter how many times he told her not to call his wife that. I was interested in navigating my own life and how these everyday simple things are a byproduct of a structure we uphold from the big flags of men outside the university and pictures of Ataturk [the founding father of Turkey] everywhere. 

Ali talks in his classroom about “translation” and carrying from one place to another to his class. Ali is someone who went abroad to school and returned. He translates his knowledge and passes it along to his students. But there are also themes of translation in how he deals with his family, or other people he encounters (the police, Pervin). What can you say about this idea as a theme in the film? 

There are multiple layers for Ali in particular. He’s read all the discourses in the West and is trying to bring feminism and human rights back home and make sense of them. But the historical context is different, and the geography is different. How does he translate that? He is struggling with that. It is a way of understanding interpretation – you carry your own story from one perspective to another. 

The Things You Kill

Ultimately, this is the story that is told: your dad beat your mum. Ali takes that and runs with it. He slowly realises there are so many holes in that story. The film is also about the stories we tell – not the one we tell others, but that we tell ourselves. And the danger of that simple story. Today, we celebrate a story, “This is such a good thing.” Tell me a story, but also don’t “tell me story” – a lie. It is a double-edged sword. It is authentic as Susan Sontag puts it, on one hand, and lies and fiction on the other. It’s dangerous! Stories with a beginning, middle, and end are very dangerous. Ali goes with that story, and it comes back to haunt him. The translation is that – you killed the simple story, and the text becomes a crime scene. You must investigate this. It’s not as simple as A killed B, let’s go do justice. There is way more to it. The story is not “taletelling,” but an investigation. That’s the story that I’m interested in.

The film’s narrative shift makes viewers wonder – what story am I following? 

The film asks whose story am I listening to? Whose story do I want to continue? The lines are blurred. At beginning I wanted the audience to think, “I know this kind of film,” Just as they start feeling comfortable, 45 minutes in, I sprinkle a few red flags here and there. Then at mid-point, I wanted to hit them and completely throw them out of the film. It’s a Brechtian approach. It is an awakening moment which allows them to think. I don’t want them to just enjoy their popcorn, I want them to choke on that popcorn for a second. This is not a fast-food cinema. I believe revenge is best served cold. 

I used no music at the end. The first audience didn’t know what to do. Should we clap or just sit there? I wanted to take all that away. The narrative switch is not obvious. But I do trust that the audience is smart and find the right material. No one walked out. I was not wrong in assuming the audience has the capacity in 2025 to watch a film delivering a cold nightmare to them. 

The Things You Kill

This film is rigorously made, and you frame the compositions very intentionally. Can you talk about your visual approach to the storytelling, which is very different than Terrestrial Verses, the other film of yours I have seen. You use windows and mirrors, and space to create a sense of claustrophobia, but you also use landscapes to express freedom. Can you talk about your visual language here? It makes viewers lean in.

I worked with Bartosz [Swiniarski], my cinematographer. He’s coming from the Polish style, which has an affinity with darkness. They have overcast weather, and he has a relationship with shades of grey. The film is a monologue with the self, it’s an inward movie. The entire film’s first and fourth act are outside the mirror. The rest is inside, it is a self-reflection. In cinema, when you want to talk about self-reflection you go to a dark place – confined, claustrophobic. I thought, let’s reverse that. Let’s bring it into the open. The world inside is vast. Put this reflection outside in vast mountains and provide this platform for inner monologue. All the conversations happen in the open. It’s refreshing and makes it harder to read the twist coming. We didn’t want it to happen in a house or basement. That’s why we took it there. We made a simple rule. With Ali, the camera is very static or moves slowly in a controlled way. With Reza it is handheld. Until [a death] when it becomes a combination of both. It becomes fluid. It is not bound by static or chaotic aggressive energy. I can go with a natural flow, using focus to control storytelling. There is a scene where Ali gives a speech, when the focus comes late. It provides a great reading of realisation. I did not want to see his eyes when he tells the story, so I provide him with a sense of dignity. To keep us wondering – it’s not clear yet – why are you afraid of your father? It comes into focus. He understands for the first time why he was afraid. That’s why the father beating his mum provokes him so much. I wanted to use the camera as a way to provide him with a shelter for dignity and a moment of realisation. It was scary to shoot 30 seconds of closeup out of focus. People thought it would be a disaster, but this was the only way I wanted to shoot it.

I am curious about the depictions of masculinity in The Things You Kill. Ali may feel less of a man because of his sperm count. Hamit is a patriarch in the old school mould. And Reza, who is the embodiment of a new masculinity? What are you trying to express about how men in general, and these men in particular, behave? 

In Hamit’s second part of the film, when he’s dead, you slowly start liking the guy. You discover a softer side of him. He is not a one-shade man. The problem with Ali and Hamit is the way they communicate and how 30 seconds into a conversation, they always fight. Hamit has never had the opportunity to give his side of the story, as violent as it is. But Pervin loves him so much. She is absolutely devastated, and she knows a completely different Hamit. Ali realises this woman knew a different man. 

For me, masculinity is always in crisis. We have two genders – feminine and masculinity in crisis. There is no other way to put it. This fragility of masculinity is part of the film’s conversation. How fragile it is, how much pressure society puts on you. That you don’t dare to tell your partner that your sperm count is low. You’re not man enough. In this society, it is all about size. I put it in a vulgar way. But that’s why you see images of men printed on 30-metre-tall flags hanging at the university. This is a crisis of masculinity. How that effects men, women, and children the same way – they are all subjected to this extreme violence. The act of killing sounds like a manly thing to do, but the ultimate feeling is not that. 

There is an interesting discussion of why Ali behaves the way he does. Can you talk about that idea in the film as well as themes of shame, sin, and forgiveness?

The fact that Ali cannot talk to his father goes back to his trauma. He was a helpless child. When he needed a father and a protector, he could not go to him. It has a personal implication and a political implication. The personal implication is that he has been subjected to unimaginable violence by other kids and he could not go anywhere. That perpetuated his trauma and now, 30 years later, he still cannot talk about it. Hamit is blind to Ali’s pain. He does not know because he never got to know him. He asks, “What did I do to God that gave me such a son?” He gave you a son, you just didn’t talk to him. The political implication is that the figure of the father is everywhere, but no one can talk with him. Society cannot talk to this father figure, and there is violence in that. There will be a political violent outburst as well. 

In the U.S., where there is a shitshow going on right now, people have not been able to express themselves. There are two groups of people running this country forever, making more money, and now giving fascist salutes at political rallies. It’s become normalised. It is the beginning of a nightmare here. This political reading of the personal, and personal reading of the political in the film was very important for me. Several times we show the picture of Ataturk, which means “Father of the nation.” The comparison of the flags and the father and the personal is a very interesting part of the film. The image of the father is a religious critique also. The father is ultimately, God. In the Abrahamic traditions, there is always the killing of Ishmael, which is celebrated. It is a sacrifice; God sent a sheep. When we reverse it here, when they are going to kill the father, God sends hundreds of sheep. That was sarcasm. You sent one. If you send hundreds, I’ll still kill him. 

Ali lies to himself, to his wife, his family members, and others. What can you say about him being an unreliable narrator, or even self-deluded? Do you think the film is about mental illness?

You could read it that way. I don’t want to take that interpretation away. I think he is a reliable narrator, but the narrative is unreliable. Even when he lies, he is truthful. He knows what he is doing. We know he lies. But the story he tells himself is unreliable. There is another version. 

On that same note, there is an exchange Ali has where it is asked, “If a husband cheats, do you want kindness or the truth?” What are your thoughts on that? 

Personally…it’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t want the truth, and I don’t want kindness, but I want transparency. For Meriem, the sister, she is transparent. She knows where the father stands. Things make sense to her. She attacks Reza with the narration. You want the truth? Here is the truth. Can you handle it? Like that classic Jack Nicholson line, “You can’t handle the truth!” There are shades to it. Hamit is an asshole to your mother, but he took her to Mecca in a wheelchair twice. He’s a nice guy to strangers. 

There are many ways to unpack this. There are histories and various perspectives involved.
That’s the beauty of life and the aggression of narrative. Storytelling is ultimately, a patriarchal form the way we know it today. It has to make the clearest sense. The king has to understand it. In indigenous stories, there is no clear end. There are holes in it, it doesn’t all make sense. There are things that remain unsaid, untold, out of the structure. That’s storytelling in the most beautiful sense. That’s life. There is no one answer. You can look back and make a story and know all the holes in the story. I want a movie that makes you want to have a cigarette and wakes you up six months down the road.