The World Cinema Dramatic program of Sundance often leaves a bit to be desired as it feels like accomplished international cinema waits for Berlin, Rotterdam, or Cannes in the first half of the year. This is not to say that there’s never anything of value in this program, but the truth is that Sundance remains a North American festival through and through, no matter what city it calls home in the future.
Easily the best of the trio I saw from this program in 2025 is Alireza Khatami’s ambitious “The Things You Kill,” a deserved winner of this program’s Directing Award this year. The director of “Terrestrial Verses” has made a film that I heard was Lynchian, an adjective that threw me off for the first half of a film that seems to owe a great deal more to Asghar Farhadi (with whom Khatami studied) than the recently deceased master. Without spoiling, there’s a twist involving identity that feels like it owes a debt to “Lost Highway” as Khatami explores the impact of violence in a manner that’s riveting and effective. This is powerful stuff.
The Canadian Khatami tells a story set in Turkey but one that rings true with cultural issues relevant to his home country of Iran. Ali (Ekin Koç) is a teacher in an unnamed Turkish city, where he’s married to a veterinarian (Hazar Ergüçlü) and living a relatively non-descript life, even as Khatami peppers his script with signs of impending doom. There are bad pipes, threats of Ali’s class being canceled next year, and even a well on a piece of farmland that’s not deep enough. Something is going to go wrong.
And something does when Ali’s mother dies and the son starts to grow suspicious of his philandering father Hamit (Ercan Kesal). Did dad’s negligence hasten mom’s death? Worse? When a gardener offers a chance for Ali to take an act of vengeance, he does so, and well something in both his life and the film about it breaks, leading to those Lynch comparisons.
“The Things You Kill” is a riveting blend of Lynchian oddity and Turkish realism. It has echoes of Farhadi and the masterful Nuri Bilge Ceylan in theme and setting, but unfolds in an unpredictable, riveting manner. It becomes a film not just about violence but about how we tell stories of acts of violence, and how we hide our darkest feelings and selves from the world around us, even the person in the mirror.
Swann Arlaud appears in Sukkwan Island by Vladimir de Fontenay, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Haut et Court – Maipo Film – Versus Production – Good Chaos – RTBF
My other two World Dramatic Competition offerings were mediocre at best, so I’ll be brief on both.
First, there’s Vladimir de Fontenay’s survival drama “Sukkwan Island,” a movie about a 13-year-old named Roy (Woody Norman) living off the land with his father (Swann Arlaud of “Anatomy of a Fall”) … sorta. A final twist takes a film I already found boring and makes it insulting, revealing that all you were supposed to care about for the previous two hours was really a cinematic game. I haven’t hated an ending so much in years. It’s cheap in every way.
The film before it isn’t great either. Those two hours consist of Roy and his father at a remote location deep in the Norwegian fjords, battling conditions, injury, and illness. It alternates between hard-fought lessons about the cruelty of the natural world and a son getting to know a father from whom he has been distant his whole life. Some of the scenery is gorgeous, but you can feel the strings being pulled in every scene of this film, until the final one breaks, and the whole island sinks into the sea.
Guo Xiao Dong and Sandrine Pinna appear in LUZ by Flora Lau, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Finally, there’s the frustrating “LUZ,” which drew ticket buyers with the promise of the always-good Isabelle Huppert, but one of the best living actresses is wasted here on a film of stilted parent-child dynamics that ultimately has almost nothing to say. A film that starts with neon-soaked imagery that recalls Refn and Noe quickly loses its pulse, jumbling its themes and smashing its characters together in a manner that feels too often like a first draft of a screenplay in desperate need of a focusing rewrite.
“LUZ” is really two stories connected by a virtual reality world. In one, a father seeks a connection with his estranged daughter, who happens to be a cam girl. In another, a daughter tries to get closer to her ailing stepmother, played by Huppert. It becomes impossible to care about either, and director Flora Lau struggles greatly to connect them outside of the virtual world that gives people in this film focus.
Some of the scenery in Chongqing and Paris is gorgeous, but that’s about all that “LUZ” has to offer, a film that’s ultimately as shallow as the virtual worlds that its characters occupy.
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