Childhood Trauma, Repression, and Feminist Reimagining Behind Locked Doors: The Witch, a film by Erman Bostan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.864Keywords:
Turkish cinema, witch figure, repression, trauma, gender, psychoanalytic film theory, feminist film theory, Erman BostanAbstract
The Witch (Tr: Cadı, Erman Bostan, 2024), loosely adapted from Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s 1912 novel, reimagines the witch not as a supernatural being but as a cultural construct shaped by superstition, trauma, and gendered subjectivity. This study argues that the film transforms the witch into a symptom of male repression and a site of female agency. Drawing on Freud and Lacan’s theories of repression and subject formation, Jung’s archetypal symbolism, and feminist film theory (Kristeva’s abjection, Creed’s monstrous-feminine, Mulvey’s gaze), the study conducts narrative and character analysis. By reframing the witch through psychoanalytic and feminist perspectives, The Witch shifts the Turkish horror genre from external demonology to internal psychopolitical structures, opening new feminist interpretations by a male director.
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