The Things You Kill

Turkish literature professor Ali Ekin Koç talks to his wife Hazar Ergüçlü about a disturbing dream she describes. In that dream, Ali’s father arrives at their door, insists on coming inside, and then asks for the light to be turned off. The image sticks with him as a hint of the past lingering in their house, and it foreshadows the weight of memory, family pressure, and unanswered questions that will drive Ali toward difficult choices.

Ali visits his mother, who has grown frail since years earlier when his father, Hamit, played by Ercan Kesal, beat her and left scars that never fully healed. The home itself is rundown—the indoor toilet broken, the walls bearing the marks of time and fear. In the course of this visit, Ali uncovers a bag containing a gun in the septic tank, a finding that adds to his sense of encroaching danger and the sense that danger has followed him home. He offers to fix the toilet to ease his ailing mother’s misery, but his offer is met with harsh shaming from Hamit, and Ali is sent away. This moment deepens his sense of shame and worthlessness in a system that already seems to be closing in on him. The struggle to prove himself—whether as a scholar with a future at the university or as a dutiful son—becomes more urgent as he learns about his own infertility, a private burden he keeps hidden from Hazar.

The weight of past violence and the fragility of the present push Ali toward radical steps. His mother dies after being found face-down in her locked home, and Hamit, who discovers the body, delays reporting it to the family. Ali’s anger boils over as he confronts his father in front of relatives, and Hamit’s cutting, public shame only deepens the familial fracture. The sorrow and anger from this moment ripple through Ali’s life and contribute to a growing sense of disillusionment with the life he thought he could rebuild in Turkey after leaving the United States.

On a farm at the city’s edge that Ali is trying to revive, he meets Reza, a cautious and wary man who becomes his gardener. Reza, played by Erkan Kolçak Köstendil, is soon drawn into a web of practical problems and moral compromises. He warns that reviving the farm will require a deep, workable well, machinery, and permission from authorities—costly and complex ventures that threaten to overwhelm Ali’s already fragile sense of control. The farm—and the dream of rejuvenation—becomes a crucible where Ali’s personal anxieties about infertility, his precarious academic position, and his strained relationship with Hazar collide.

Tensions inside the house intensify as Ali and Reza’s partnership deepens. Reza, who now also occupies Ali’s university job, becomes entangled in a dangerous arrangement with a pretty student who offers to trade sex for a higher grade. The ethically loose scenario threatens to contaminate Ali’s career and family life, especially when Reza takes the student back to Ali’s parents’ home and encounters Hamit’s mistress, whom he angrily berates and sends away. The lines between mercy and coercion blur as Reza continues to manipulate events to his own advantage.

As the plot thickens, Reza reports Hamit missing and obtains money through bribery to have the well dug. Ali’s illness of infertility becomes a public matter as his wife, tired of feeling shut out, contemplates leaving him. They eventually discover that Turkey prohibits certain kinds of sperm donors, a revelation that forces them to consider selling Hamit’s home to raise the funds to seek a donor abroad. Ali’s sister, who clings to the hope that Hamit will return, resents this move, highlighting the rifts caused by longing and financial desperation.

Reza visits Ali’s aunt, Hamit’s sister, who lives in fear for her missing brother. She recalls a brutal history of an older generation’s violence and the way a scar on Hamit’s head marks a lifetime of cruelty. The aunt hints that Hamit’s past cannot easily be blamed on one person or one moment, a reminder that families carry multiple layers of guilt and memory that cannot be easily unwound.

When Reza returns to Hamit’s grave, he discovers it empty. Ali pretends to be unconscious, and in a moment of desperation, rises up to strangle Reza to death with a chain. He buries Reza’s body on the farm and slowly resumes life as best as he can, now free to resume his marriage with Hazar. The reversal of power is stark: the man who was once a patient, educated professor becomes the one who enforces his own version of justice, even as the moral lines blur beyond recognition.

Authorities later pull Hamit’s car from a dam, concluding that his body was washed away, and Ali tells Hamit’s mistress that he is dead. At the university, Ali fights for his job, explaining how fear of his father had driven him to flee Turkey, yet asserting that he is no longer afraid. With the police clarifying the mystery of his father’s death, the family home goes up for sale, signaling a final separation from the past.

Late at night, Ali’s life is unsettled once more when a knock comes at the door. His father appears—bleeding from a head wound—and asks to come inside, just as he did in Hazar’s dream. He lies down in the same spot Ali had occupied and asks for the light to be turned off. The dog chorus outside swells, and the knock at the door returns, a haunting reminder that the past, once awakened, cannot be fully silenced. The film closes on this unresolved, unsettling note, inviting viewers to wrestle with questions of memory, guilt, and the inescapable pull of family legacy.

Last Updated: January 06, 2026 at 10:49