Ma`rifat Farhangi Ejtemaei

Making up about half of the country’s population, women have played an instrumental role in all the important events, especially during the imposed war. Given the pervasiveness of the media of cinema and its impact on the audience, producing a true representation of women’s role in the cinema of Sacred Defense is of great importance in filling the existing gaps. Reviewing the theoretical foundations of representation and qualitative analysis, the present paper examines the actual role of women in the war and the way they are represented in the Sacred Defense cinema. The main question of this paper is to what extent the representation of women in the Sacred Defense cinema reflects the reality of women's presence in the war and their influential role. The findings show that women have not been fairly represented in three areas: their activity behind the front, their presence in the battlefield and their postwar activities. In some other areas, women have not been represented as having an active role, but the representation seems to be prosaic and clichéd.