The existential apocalypse of a Turkish literature professor will get an indirect and chilling examine in “The Issues You Kill.” On its floor, this disquieting diptych about male nervousness has the texture of, say, an Asghar Farhadi film, an ethical dilemma urging forth a thriller plot. However that’s exactly the kind of bait-and-switch Iranian author/director Alireza Khatami is working on right here, till his tense and nightmarish movie begins to resemble extra one thing like David Lynch’s “Misplaced Freeway” as directed by Abbas Kiarostami. Khatami (“Terrestrial Verses”), who lives in Canada, relocated the setting from Iran to Turkey to evade censorship in his native nation — a censorship of patriarchal violence that the movie itself additionally rings upon like a warning bell of a bleak future.
“The Issues You Kill” ends with the identical enigmatic line — “kill the sunshine” — spoken by two very totally different folks. One is borne from a dream, the opposite a nightmare, and so they kind the start and finish of an existential demise sentence across the hapless Ali (Ekin Koç). He’s in his early 30s, good-looking, and married to a gorgeous, 10-years-younger veterinarian (Hazar Ergüçlü). However the cracks start to kind. Someplace in a Turkish metropolis, he teaches translated Western literature to a disaffected classroom, a course he’s mocked for by directors and one about to be canceled subsequent semester. His low sperm depend retains him from conceiving a baby regardless of his spouse’s determined want to take action, solely reminding additional that he is the issue, the widespread denominator of all his misfortune. He has a tense relationship along with his father Hamit (Ercan Kesal), who seems to be at his son and sees solely disappointment. “What did I try this Allah gave me such a son?” His mom, in the meantime, is a geriatric wreck who wants around-the-clock consideration.
Just like the compulsive twisting of a pencil right into a sharpener, Khatami tightens the narrative rope to excruciating impact with a collection of ominous foreshadowings. The plumbing appears to be busted all over the place, there’s a pistol hidden in a water tank, and a crucially positioned mirror all however opens up like a portal, seemingly sucking Ali into it. In a distancing lengthy absorb no rush to zoom in — Khatami and cinematographer Bartosz Swiniarski typically work with lenses that go out and in of focus to counsel waking or coming to from a dream — Ali and his sisters Nesrin and Meriam collect round for the horrible information. Their mom was discovered lifeless, with Hamit off the property on the time of her fall.
The demise, although, is suspicious as a result of an post-mortem report reveals she died of a hemorrhage attributable to an unknown blunt-force trauma to the again of her head. However she fell face down? Hamit has a historical past of rage and abuse, main Ali down a darkening path that will, surprisingly, find yourself jumpstarting his impotent life. In a society that favors a patriarchal breadwinner over one who can’t even sire a baby, who can’t fulfill filial prophecy due to his personal emotional stuntedness, Ali is an general feckless man by society’s requirements. But when he can type out the demise of his mom and choke out the chain of patriarchal violence, one he’s now primed to soak up, on the roots, possibly he can save himself.
Whereas “The Issues You Kill” dwells in particularly Muslim points — the pressured piousness that may result in a sleepwalk of a life, the ladies who’re pushed apart by society — Khatami is after a extra common impact right here, difficult the notion that his story must be a Muslim one by introducing Western filmmaking practices and allusions. Even whereas Khatami’s late beloved countryman Kiarostami stays a real north star.
Like a mirage, an enigmatic gardener (Erkan Kolçak Köstendil) enters the body with a proposition Ali can’t refuse, or possibly willed into being himself. The gardener appears to have already got a penchant for tall tales, with a pocket book filled with scribbles and an English-language paperback he’s studying. And are these Ali’s garments he’s instantly carrying? The Anatolian mountains, the place Ali tends to a barren backyard, present a sinister backdrop from which something, not only a vagabond dropped as if from the sky, can instantly seem.
Right here’s when “The Issues You Kill” kicks into larger, insidious gear. After a sudden and brutal act of violence, the film itself seems to be concussed, a key forged member swapped, and a model of Ali now inhabiting an alternate actuality that’s very near the film’s first half, however every little thing’s simply barely off. Therefore, the echoes of “Misplaced Freeway,” the place the character performed by Invoice Pullman in David Lynch’s eerie primer on male violence is body-swapped for Balthazar Getty within the second half. The comparisons to Abbas Kiarostami come within the self-aware formalism of “The Issues You Kill.” A la Iranian director Kiarostami’s “Style of Cherry” — a practice of nonlinear filmmaking Khatami is way extra invested in than his modern countrymen — it wouldn’t be a shock for the movie to chop to its personal director, holding a digicam. This movie is in regards to the contagious energy of storytelling — which incorporates mendacity and self-deception — and what a doubtlessly deadly gadget it may be within the unsuitable and even proper palms. And what are the unsuitable or proper palms? Khatami doesn’t reply any of that. Whereas the self-consciousness of the model threatens to boring the emotional affect of the story, Khatami right here isn’t an particularly emotional filmmaker. I’d put him nearer on the trail to a horror director.
“The Issues You Kill” is sort of a unhealthy, sweat-breaking dream that leaves you dazed and feverish — and a black-hearted gaze into the poison patriarchy oozes into males’s veins simply as a lot as girls. Ali, like a male feminist who’s hip to that very system, thinks he’s received all of it discovered. However Ali is laying the tracks, too, and what Khatami brilliantly does right here is spike these tracks with landmines that implode all the best way to that closing, dying line: “Kill the sunshine.” You may’t cease what’s coming, and what’s coming is worse than you thought.
Grade: A-
“The Issues You Kill” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. It’s presently looking for U.S. distribution. Greatest Pal Endlessly is dealing with gross sales.
Wish to keep updated on IndieWire’s movie opinions and demanding ideas? Subscribe right here to our newly launched e-newsletter, In Evaluation by David Ehrlich, by which our Chief Movie Critic and Head Critiques Editor rounds up the very best new opinions and streaming picks together with some unique musings — all solely accessible to subscribers.