Entre véus e bombas: as feridas da guerra Irã-Iraque através da fantasmagoria em Under the Shadow

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the film Under the Shadow (2016), directed by Babak Anvari, focusing on how the work, situated within the horror genre, employs phantasmagoric elements to construct a critical allegory of the social horrors experienced during the Iran–Iraq War. Set in the historical context of post-Revolutionary Iran, the film symbolically and sensitively portrays the psychological and social impacts of armed conflict on women living under a repressive political regime. This qualitative and interpretive research is grounded in theoretical frameworks from film studies, trauma theory, phantasmagoria, and gender studies. The analysis concentrates on formal aspects of mise-en-scène, narrative construction, and symbolic elements used to depict fear, oppression, and subjective collapse. The findings demonstrate that Under the Shadow uses horror as a critical language, revealing historical and structural tensions through aesthetic strategies of fear and symbolic representation. In doing so, the film reaffirms the potential of genre cinema as an expressive and political tool, capable of elaborating collective trauma and denouncing invisible systems of violence.