Representation of women’s life in the contemporary world as portrayed in Asghar Farhadi's movies: Fireworks Wednesday, About Elly and A Separation

Part of gendered culture is reproduced through media. In this respect, cinema movies could represent social realities either explicitly or implicitly. Asghar Farhadi is one of the directors who addresses family and social issues in his movies. The current study aims to show how women in the contemporary world are presented in Asghar Farhadi’s movies. This question has been raised within a representation approach. In terms of methodology, qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach has been applied to identify overt and covert themes in the selected movies. Findings suggest that three selected movies represent women in categories such as: modern woman entangled in tradition; conflict between liberation and dependence; deceit and secrecy; being subjected to violence in gender relations; oppression by the presence of male domination and psychological insecurity. Eventually, these categories create a core category called “Woman between Dialectics of Tradition and Modernity".