The Sundance Film Festival starts Thursday, January 23, and IndieWire can share an exclusive trailer for an unsettling new film not to be missed out of the World Cinema Dramatic competition. Iranian director Alireza Khatami (“Terrestrial Verses,” the only Iranian film to premiere at Cannes 2023) debuts the mind- and narrative-bending, Turkey-set thriller “The Things You Kill,” about a literature professor conceiving of a murder that’s close to home. Or is it a disappearance?
As I wrote in our Sundance curtain raiser, with shades of Abbas Kiarostami in its self-awareness and “Lost Highway” in flipping the narrative (and a key cast member) halfway through, “The Things You Kill” is shot with cool precision as Ali (Ekin Koç) befriends an enigmatic gardener who opens the door to jumpstarting his flatlined life. It’s hard to say too much about this mesmerizing film without spoiling it, but Khatami, who lives in Canada, exhibits calm control over a story that’s inexorably hurtling toward doom. Until the story turns inside out yet again.
Here’s the Sundance Film Festival official programming description: “Haunted by the suspicious death of his ailing mother, a university professor coerces his enigmatic gardener to execute a cold-blooded act of vengeance. Celebrated Iranian American director Alireza Khatami (‘Terrestrial Verses,’ 2023 Cannes Film Festival) makes his Sundance competition debut with his striking third feature, a quietly insidious psychological thriller that hits close to home. With ingenuity and bold self-awareness, Khatami orchestrates a gradual descent into the oppressive depths of generational patriarchy, peeling back long-held secrets and collectively condoned behavior to confront the decaying internalized ugliness underneath. Set against sweeping landscapes, the film boasts a renowned Turkish cast whose nuanced performances punctuate this searing examination of cycles of violence, ensuring that voice is given to a generation desperately seeking to renounce the dark legacy they have inherited. Ambitious and unsettling, ‘The Things You Kill’ shatters expectations to deliver a timely and original vision of the cost of personal and collective liberation.”
Watch the trailer for “The Things You Kill,” an IndieWire exclusive, below.
“The Things You Kill” premieres in the World Cinema Dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24. It will also be available online starting January 30 for the public. Best Friend Forever is handling sales at the festival.