Journeying into Metaphorical Dark Corners

An Interview with Director Alireza Khatami

Authors

  • Paul Risker

Abstract

Iranian director Alireza Khatami’s Turkish language mystery-thriller, The Things You Kill (Öldürdüğün Şeyler 2025), is a deceptively playful film. It sits in the tradition of films that surprise its audience by taking unexpected narrative detours, even fracturing the rules that ground its world.

The Things You Kill is an international co-production between Canada, Turkey, Poland and France, and was Canada’s submission for the 98th Academy Awards.

Speaking with MSJ, Khatami discussed the unpredictability of life, the reason filmmaking continues to excite him, and his frustrations with how the cinematic form isn’t pushing its boundaries. Khatami also reflected on the need to risk losing or alienating one’s audience, how The Things You Kill has been critiqued through more of a western lens, and yet, rejects western thought, as well as the Jungian aspects of his mystery-thriller.

Author Biography

Paul Risker

Paul Risker is an independent scholar, freelance film and literary critic, and interviewer. Outside of editing MSJ’s interview and film festival sections, he mainly contributes to PopMatters, although his criticism and interviews have been published by both academic and non-academic publications, that include: Cineaste, Film International, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video and Little White Lies. He remains steadfast in his belief of the need to counter contemporary cultures emphasis on the momentary, by writing for posterity, adding to an ongoing discussion that is essentially us belonging to something that is bigger than ourselves.

Downloads

Published

2026-07-08

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2026): Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration

Section

Interviews