Sibel: A Female Character Who Quietly Writes a Feminist Manifesto

In film narratives, the concept of silence is sometimes conveyed to the viewer in a metaphorical context, and sometimes silence is presented visibly. In this film analysis, while examining sound as a concept on the basis of the content of the film, attention is drawn to the female character’s inability to speak. In the study, how the issue of voice and inability to speak, which is important in psychoanalytic film theory research, can be made sense of from a feminist perspective is considered in detail. From this point of view, Kaja Silverman’s The Acoustic Mirror (1988), one of the feminist film theorists, draws the framework of the film analysis. Within the framework of the study, the concepts of identification and emasculation, along with the issues of inability to speak and voice, are opened to questioning through the female character. In this respect, Annette Kuhn's Women's Picture (1982), Part: III Rereading Dominant Cinema: Feminism and Film Theory, the importance of the representation of female characters with their states of existence and lack in films in which they are focused on silence is hinted at, and it is reminded again that the ‘invisible of the visible’ emerges as a central issue in feminist film analysis. The ‘invisibility of the visible’ makes the female character more visible in her representation associated with silence or inability to speak. The ‘language’ that mediates Sibel’s speech also causes people to perceive her existence as dangerous. With the questions arising from this study, how Sibel is presented as a mute character in the film from a feminist perspective and the importance of the representation of female characters who cannot speak in terms of feminist film practice are opened to discussion.