In Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill, Ali (Ekin Koç) is unsettled by the death of his mother under questionable circumstances and hires a gardener, Reza (Erkan Kolçak Köstendil), to help him exact the version of justice he believes is necessary.
Awards Buzz spoke with Khatami about how this project evolved from an unrelated concept to something deeply – and possibly far too – personal:
“It’s based on my own personal stories. I was going through issues with the family, and at the same time, I was trying to adapt a book. Slowly, I realized that I’m putting the book completely aside and I’m writing about my sisters and then realized my mom is coming into the story. But as I was writing, I was asking myself, can I share this? There are many scripts that I wrote and I threw them out. I thought, alright, I’ll just finish it and think about it later. I’ll put it on the shelf. There’s no way I can share this one. Because I was really writing dialogues even that I had with my parents and my sisters, and it slowly became a scary piece. Once the first draft came out, I couldn’t resist. I sent it to a friend who has nothing to do with cinema or anything, he’s a computer scientist. I sent it to him to read and then he called me at 1am and he was almost crying. I was like, okay, other people see the pain. It connects. All right, fuck it. I’ll put it out there.”
Watch the video above to hear how Khatami feels about his own family members going to see the film and how it feels to have the film selected as Canada’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature.
The Things You Kill is now available on digital.
