Terrestrial Verses<\/a>,\u201d a nine-vignette mosaic about the petty bureaucracies of working-class life in Iran, was shot in secret. \u201cI\u2019m familiar with that kind of filmmaking, but it doesn\u2019t excite me. The movie, of course, people go, \u2018Oh my god, the movie\u2019s shot illegally.\u2019 There is no value to that for me,\u201d Khatami said. \u201cYes, some festivals will love you for doing that, but the movie needs to last. For me, politics is capital P. \u2026 Of course, Islamophobia sells very well. If you are subtly Islamophobic, you will be well-received in the Cannes competition.\u201d<\/p>\nKhatami believes that Telefilm Canada finally supporting his film as the International Feature Oscar selection is a \u201chuge step forward\u201d for BIPOC filmmakers living in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lived as a refugee in many places before. This is the first time that I have a country that can select a movie of mine. I appreciate Telefilm finally agreeing to let us compete in that selection process,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was a little bit of hesitation at the beginning. We went back and forth a lot about the rules and regulations of the Academy, how we are eligible, and finally, Telefilm agreed, and I got a lot of very emotional calls from non-white filmmakers. Some were in tears, who thought they would never select a movie like this. In a way, we broke a barrier for BIPOC filmmakers [in Canada]. Canada is not only interested in the labor of the immigration community; now it finally has embraced their stories as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part thriller, part moral parable, and part surreal exercise, that \u201cThe Things You Kill\u201d is so consistently unpredictable and surprising in its structure, casting, and themes was by design, a way for Khatami to shake up the sleepiness of a lot of modern cinema.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few people were surprised by the formal choices we made,\u201d he said of the film\u2019s Sundance premiere. \u201cThey didn\u2019t expect that. I knew there were certain expectations from an \u2018Iranian filmmaker\u2019 when you make a film in Turkey, so I started the film as a Trojan horse of an Asghar Farhadi movie. People coming to the film think they know the film. When I pull the rug from beneath them, a lot of people who are truly cinephiles are excited to see a bold formal choice, but some people get pissed. \u2018Who the hell is he to do that? These kinds of things are supposed to be Gaspar No\u00e9 or David Lynch.\u2019 But I\u2019m grateful. A lot of people were quite open to the film, and the more time passed, the better reaction we got.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khatami modeled \u201cThe Things You Kill\u201d after the kinds of movies that excite him, the boundary-pushing of say the aforementioned Lynch and Kiarostami, which are not de rigeuer for many of his fellow Iranian filmmakers. (Jafar Panahi\u2019s made-in-secret Palme d\u2019Or winner \u201cIt Was Just an Accident,\u201d for example, was shot in secret but is also one of the dissident Iranian director\u2019s most straightforward narratives.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThat excites me, a movie that doesn\u2019t die. A movie that, OK, it\u2019s not easily digestible, he said. \u201cI\u2019m a cinephile at heart. I want to push this to some territory that we haven\u2019t discovered yet. What\u2019s the point of me having a couple of flashbacks and say, this guy exists or doesn\u2019t exist? That\u2019s been done many times, so can we push it? A lot of people make films like the cinema is dead, like there is nothing else between my medium shot, your medium shot. Can we do something that is more exhilarating? Of course, there is risk. But that\u2019s what keeps me alive. This movie took eight years for me to make. I don\u2019t want to make medium shot to medium shot. I want to make a movie that, 20 years later, I watch it and say, \u2018That\u2019s still watchable.’\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that the concept of the film \u201cstarted as friendship between these two guys [Ali and Reza] and slowly discovering that he\u2019s in negotiation with himself. I started experimenting with my own narrative. I started bringing my sisters into it, my mom into it, my dad into it, building the world around it. But every step of the way, I\u2019m always like a child. I\u2019m like, \u2018OK, this is the paved path. But what if I step here? What if I try to go and get lost in this area?\u2019 And that\u2019s always, both as a writer and as a director, exhilarating, right? A lot of people were saying, \u2018This will not work.\u2019 People get quite confused. But that was exciting for me. I like dwelling in the confused space.\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call it a confusion, but there is a mystery that life is. The capacity to hold the mystery in your hand and say, \u2018OK, I\u2019m going to live with this.\u2019 As a filmmaker, I\u2019m not afraid of pushing the audience to almost leave, but I don\u2019t want them to leave, so I tone back. I don\u2019t make experimental films, but I push them to the edge. Still want to leave? I give them something to sit back [for].\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Things You Kill\u201d is now in select theaters from Cineverse.<\/em><\/p>\nBest of IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\nSign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comparisons to Abbas Kiarostami and David Lynch set a high bar for filmmaker Alireza Khatami, an Iranian who now lives in Canada, and his masterful \u201cThe Things You Kill\u201d at Sundance. This unsettling thriller about impotent (emotionally, literally) university professor Ali (Turkish star Ekin Ko\u00e7), on the path to vengeance after the suspicious death of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2157032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[413079,413078,413076,413077,22762,52337],"class_list":["post-2157031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-abbas-kiarostami","tag-ali-asgari","tag-alireza-khatami","tag-asghar-farhadi","tag-canada","tag-david-lynch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\u2018The-Things-You-Kill-Director-Alireza-Khatami-Dares-Audiences-to.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2157031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2157033,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157031\/revisions\/2157033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2157032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2157031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2157031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2157031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}