Expression of trauma with animal metaphors in Bahman Ghobadi cinema

In this study, Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi's cinema will be examined. It is possible to see the effects of the characteristic features of Iranian cinema in the way Ghobadi processes his preferred themes. In the first part of the research, the history of Iranian cinema, its evolution and transformation under political and sociocultural influences, its technical-thematic choices and the sources it is fed will be examined to probe what type of cinema the director is part of. In this section, the main features of Iranian cinema such as poetry, use of child and animal, narration of daily life in cinema will be discussed in detail. First of all, the history of human-animal relations and the role of animals in narratives will be examined and then the use of animals in cinema and the reasons of this preference especially in Iranian cinema will be questioned. In the second part of the research, Bahman Ghobadi cinema will be discussed in depth and analyzed in terms of story, discourse and thematic structure. In his films, the director shares the issues of the land he lives in with his audience and brings the traumatic themes such as war, border, mine, migration, rape, prohibitions, poverty, deprivation and obstacles to the screen. In order to analyze these themes in depth, firstly, the definition of trauma will be made, then the development of trauma diagnosis in the historical process will be searched and the types of trauma and post-traumatic symptoms will be included. The themes of trauma and characters showing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have been examined in the context of "trauma cinema" of the last 20 years. In this study, after the definition of trauma cinema is made, the categories and their features of the genre will be examined. The aim is to conclude whether Ghobadi cinema can be examined within the scope of trauma cinema. In the last part of the study, four movies of the director titled with the names of animals will be selected and the themes he mostly work on in his movies will be revealed with the Grounded Theory approach. Then, we will examine whether these themes overlap with the diagnosis of trauma and PTSD in DSM-V. Assuming that animals are important metaphors in Ghobadi's films, the importance of animal metaphors in the narrative of trauma will be examined in his films. Finally, an in depth interview with Bahman Ghobadi will be realized and he will be asked questions about trauma narration, themes and animal metaphors. As a result of this research, it is aimed to reach a conclusion about the oppurtinities come from animal metaphors for trauma narration in the director's cinema.