Acting Out of Trauma in Bahman Ghobadi's Turtles Can Fly

Abstract

The present dissertation on Bahman Ghobadi’s film Turtles Can Fly attempts to show a vivid portrayal of traumatic experience of the characters in Iraq by the violence of the Iraqi armies. Ghobadi here shows the dejected life of the characters and their traumatic experience because of their direct personal experiences of the atrocities perpetrated by the Iraqi armies on the eve of US invasion. The protagonist’s delirium caused by the gaps and the disruptions of war, conflicts and violence increases the pressure of trauma which constantly rises to the surface of his mind and makes him alienated because they become the chief determinant of his life. This is an attempt at acting out the trauma which, however, does not get evacuated so that it remains melancholia.