Representation of Collective Trauma in Contemporary Documentary Animation

This research project aims to examine how collective trauma is portrayed in documentary animation through the construction of individual narratives. In addition, it seeks to identify and describe the common and unique characteristics of such representations. The study employs a critical discourse analysis method in conjunction with narrative and semiotic analysis in order to develop a methodology for analyzing the strategies utilized to depict trauma in documentary animation. The paper is structured into two main chapters. The first chapter provides the theoretical foundations, including definitions and theoretical descriptions of key concepts, such as collective memory, collective trauma, and its representation, as well as the animated documentary genre. The second chapter is devoted to the empirical section, which comprises the analysis of the two films in question: "Waltz with Bashir" (2008) by Ari Folman and "Persepolis" (2007) by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.