Cinematic Construction of Crime and Criminals in Iranian Films

The aim of this paper is the study of crime and criminal images in Iranian Cinema. The main question is that how Iranian films represent issues of crime and criminality. In this study, theoretical framework is representation theory, and analyzed based on 57 films. The films are produced in period between 1380 to 1394, and research method is quantitative content analysis. The hypothesis of this study is that films present a type of popular knowledge about crime and criminality to audiences. The findings supported this hypothesis, they show that Iranian films represent different information about criminals, age, gender, social class and family situation. Also, films usually display social problems related to criminals, and try to explain criminality in their discourses and narrations.