The unspeakable in cinema. The art of representing trauma and its impact on audience perception

The article analyzes cinematographic strategies for representing traumatic experience and their impact on the viewer. The focus lies on a typology of approaches ranging from symbolic mediation (irony, metaphor, allusion) to documentary capture of tragic moments. The study explores visual and narrative devices—such as silence, pause, and fragmentation—that enable the transmission of experiences resistant to verbal articulation. The theoretical framework is based on the concepts of postmemory, testimonial ethics, and traumatic narrative. Special attention is paid to Ukrainian wartime cinema—both fictional and documentary—as a means of shaping collective memory. The analysis includes examples from films such as Atlantis, Reflection, 20 Days in Mariupol, and Peaceful People, juxtaposed with canonical works of trauma documentary (Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais). The comparative approach allows for the identification of both universal aesthetic mechanisms of trauma representation and the specific features of Ukrainian visual discourse shaped by its cultural and historical context.