Palm Springs ’26: The Things You Kill

Ali ought to be respected by Turkish society, because he is a literature professor, who was educated in the United States. Unfortunately, neither literature nor Western educations are much valued under the Islamist Erdogan regime. Yet, instead of creating a sheltering social structures, his contemporary Turkey fostered a cutthroat environment that seems to have it in for him. Returning from America might have been a mistake, but he worried about his soon-to-be late mother, Sakine. The circumstances of her passing ignites Ali’s rage in Alireza Khatami’s multi-national co-production, The Things You Kill, Canada’s international Oscar submission, which screens as part of the 2026 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Ali has been concerned about Sakine. Her living conditions have so deteriorated, she must use an outhouse, rather than the indoor plumbing, despite her bad knee and rickety walker. Yet, whenever he visits, his father Hamit turns up to quarrel and belittle him. Then one night, the father informs the family of her death, whisking away Sakine’s body before anyone else arrives.

At this point, Ali’s resentment boils over. His university discontinued his English translation class and his fertility specialist determined his potency was virtually nil. Tired of smiling through humiliations, Ali hatches a plan to punish his father, with the help of Reza, a drifter he hires, ostensibly to work on his “garden,” which is more like a small hardscrabble tree farm located in the desert foothills outside of town.

Khatami co-directed the brilliant Terrestrial Verses in his native Iran, but The Things You Kill isn’t quite as viscerally intense. Admittedly, the contemporary Iranian experience translates regrettably easily to the increasingly Islamist Turkey. Consequently, Khatami persuasively and bracingly indicts the misogynistic exploitation Sakine suffered. However, Ali’s payback scheme is rather predictable, despite the filmmaker’s surreal flourishes.

Perhaps Things You Kill also suffers from unfortunate timing, since it arrives while memories of Jafar Panahi’s somewhat thematically similar but vastly superior It was Just an Accident are still fresh. Ekin Koc and Ercan Kesal are both explosively forceful as Ali and Hamit and there is a palpable sense of tragedy compounding.

Nevertheless, Khatami layers on additional layers of commentary, regarding the gamesmanship of language and the slippery nature of the various masks of persona we wear, depending on shifting social circumstances—most of which are a little too dryly cerebral for the film’s own good.

Clearly, Khatami is a talented filmmaker, who distilled a lot of anger and passion into The Things You Kill. However, it would have benefited from more of the discipline that elevated Terrestrial Verses and Panahi’s recent Oscar contender. Good in many ways, but not great, The Things You Kill screens today (1/3), Tuesday (1/6), and next Saturday (1/10) during this year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival.