SIFF 2025: Day 9 Journal
May 23rd, 2025 / Kevin Ward
Capsule Reviews of everything screened at the Seattle International Film Festival 2025
The Things You Kill—★★★★½
The Things You Kill is a brooding, elliptical study of grief, inheritance, and the cyclical nature of violence—familial and otherwise. Directed by Alireza Khatami, the film follows Ali (Ekin Koç), a literature professor whose quiet life in rural Turkey unravels after the suspicious death of his ailing mother. Grief quickly gives way to revelation as Ali begins to suspect his estranged, abusive father may have been behind it.
The most interesting thematic here is the idea of transformation as a kind of self-erasure. In one of his lectures, Ali explains that the Arabic root of "translate"—rajama—can also mean "to kill." It's a potent metaphor for the film itself: to carry oneself across the abyss of trauma is to kill the self that bore its weight. Resonantly, Ali decides to take vengeance into his own hands—and the hands of his newly hired gardener, Reza. But as Ali’s violent path unfolds, the film asks: is Ali that different from his father? What happens when you kill a version of yourself? What’s left behind? Is a new self born in its place?
Motifs of burial, water, silence, and fertility run deep—and there’s so much more to unpack. The gardener’s name, Reza, paired with Ali, forms a quiet doubling of the director’s own name, Ali-Reza, making the film’s structure and themes even more curious. A thought-provoking thriller.
The Kingdom—★★★★
The Kingdom is a tightly wound thriller that unfolds through the wary eyes of teenage Lesia, thrust into a violent world when she’s brought to a remote villa where her fugitive father and his loyal crew are hiding out. As opposing forces close in, the film ratchets up both tension and tragedy, with Lesia watching the people she’s grown up around fall one by one. Kept on the periphery of the action, she’s shielded from direct harm but not from consequence.
Ghjuvanna Benedetti is excellent as Lesia, and she shares a compelling rapport with Saveriu Santucci, who plays her father, Pierre-Paul. Their dynamic gives the film an aching emotional core, especially as Lesia begins to question the worth of all the violence surrounding her. The Kingdom is a haunting portrait of a girl coming of age in the shadow of her father’s war, quietly weighing the cost of continuing it—or choosing something else. It's tense, affecting, and charged with the burden of inherited decisions.
Time Travel is Dangerous —★★★½
Time Travel is Dangerous is a charmingly low-budget, wonderfully absurd British sci-fi comedy about two friends—well, one of them thinks they're best friends; the other is a bit more ambiguous on the matter. Their relationship is the film's offbeat emotional core, even as the plot spirals into increasingly ridiculous temporal nonsense.
After discovering a derelict time machine built out of a bumper car, they use it not to rewrite history but to swipe retro treasures from the past and stock their failing vintage shop. This gloriously small-stakes premise perfectly suits the film's lo-fi style and bone-dry humor.
One of my favorite touches is the recurring inclusion of The Future Today, a lovingly crafted fake ’80s sci-fi show featuring characters like Ralph and Botty—Botty being a “robot” whose TV head just displays a live feed of Robert, performing his role from a studio down the hall. It’s a hilarious and affectionate jab at the clunky earnestness of old-school genre television.
Also genius: the hellish alternate dimension known as the Unreason, where unlucky travelers get stuck for eons and pass the time inventing wildly complex board games and endlessly arguing over them. It’s a funny and specific dig at obsessive board game culture, and a perfect example of the kind of humor that finds its way into this story.
Dry, weird, and wholly committed to its oddball tone, Time Travel is Dangerous won’t be everyone’s thing—but for those who like their sci-fi homespun and their humor quietly biting, it’s a cult classic waiting to happen.