Abstract

The film A Sugar Cube by Reza Mirkarimi is one of the most acclaimed films in domestic and foreign festivals, and most of the research conducted on it has focused on the obvious level of its cultural symbols and meanings. The purpose of this article is to answer the question of what broader and larger cultural meanings and discourses are represented and induced in the film behind the nostalgic look of the film in representing Iranian culture and traditions. This study, with an approach based on cultural studies and Fisk's semiotic method, has explored and analyzed the codes of reality, representation, and ideology in the film A Sugar Cube and its broader discourses. The findings showed that behind the representations of the film A Sugar Cube of traditional customs and traditions of weddings, deaths, and funerals in Iranian culture, aspects of mythmaking and ideological discourse regarding the past can also be found in it. By championing and praising the traditional lifestyle and its values and rejecting modern, contemporary living, the film mythologizes traditional life. Furthermore, in its cultural narrative of the bride’s two families as representatives of tradition and the groom’s family as the embodiment of modernity, the film engages in an ideological and polarized representation of us and them. The filmmaker’s attitude towards us, the bride’s family, is positive and towards them, the groom’s family, who have chosen a modern life, is negative.