After the suspicious death of his ailing mother, Ali, a university professor in Türkiye, becomes convinced that his father is responsible. Consumed by anger and guilt, he turns to Rıza, an enigmatic man he has hired to tend his land, and draws him into an act of revenge. As long-buried family secrets surface and the authorities close in, Ali is forced to confront the consequences of what he has set in motion.

Iranian-Canadian writer and director Alireza Khatami, whose previous films include Oblivion Verses and Terrestrial Verses, uses the psychological thriller to examine masculinity, family, and how violence can pass from one generation to the next. The Things You Kill had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where Khatami received the Directing Award in the World Cinema Dramatic competition.

The Things You Kill is a tense and surreal exploration of vengeance, identity and inherited violence, following a man whose search for answers about his mother’s death forces him to look more closely at his family, his father, and ultimately himself.