This study aims to provide a psychoanalytic reading of the subject's predicament in the film Requiem (directed by Amir Naderi, 1978), employing the concepts of psychosis and melancholia metaphorically through Jacques Lacan’s theoretical framework. This film belongs to the Iranian New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 1970s—a movement characterized by its innovative and experimental tendencies, often reflecting contemporary social issues through forms of critical realism. In the film, the main character, after serving eight years in prison, is unable to reintegrate into society or, in Lacanian terms, re-establish his position within the Symbolic order as a linguistic structure, undergoing a psychotic rupture from the signifying chain. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how, due to the absence of familial and social bonds, he emerges as a quasi-psychotic subject and represents a melancholic experience as disorientation and wandering through the city. To illuminate the psychoanalytic dimensions of the central character's predicament in Requiem, a foundational understanding of these disorders is essential, bridging the film's metaphorical layers with Lacanian theory. This theoretical groundwork reveals how structural disruptions underpin the subject's estrangement. Psychosis and melancholia have often been conceptualized as pathological phenomena. Classical psychoanalysis associates psychosis with a fundamental change in the understanding of reality, while Lacanian theory sees it as arising from a disruption in the functioning of language and signification. This disruption leads to a failure of stabilization in the symbolic order, conceived as a dimension of the social order. Drawing on the perspectives of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, melancholia typically occurs within the psychotic structure: Freud associates it with the loss of an object, while Lacan emphasizes its connection to the collapse of the symbolic order and the over-proximity to the objet petit a. Few, if any, studies have examined psychosis and melancholia from a Lacanian lens in Iranian cinema. Therefore, the significance of the study lies in addressing the aforementioned psychoanalytic concepts in Iranian cinema and exploring a condition reflecting the human experience of wandering and instability in the world. The present study employs a descriptive-analytical method, drawing on data collected through film observation and consultation of library and electronic sources. The study designates the film Requiem (directed by Amir Naderi in 1978) as its case study, with the aim of offering a psychoanalytic reading of the main character's individual and social condition, and in this way, it metaphorically examines his experience of psychosis, rupture from the signifying chain, and melancholia. The theoretical framework is grounded in the approach of Jacques Lacan; in the study's theoretical foundations section, these concepts are explored alongside other fundamental components of Lacanian thought, such as the subject’s relation to the Name-of-the-Father as the primordial signifier, language and the triple division of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real, the objet petit a, desire, and the Other. The film analysis employs a textual method, examining the narrative structure and arrangement, modes of characterization, and representational forms to elucidate the subject's interaction and conflict with the space depicted in the film. The findings of the present study indicate that in Requiem, the main character, Nasrollah, on the threshold of his release from prison—which functions as a liminal space between past and present—attempts to reintegrate into the city and everyday life; yet, deprived of familial and social support, he becomes disoriented and is left to wander aimlessly. From a historical and sociological perspective, Iran during this period was subjected to contradictory modernization policies of the ruling regime, which engendered deep socio-economic dualities that profoundly influenced the symbolic fabric of daily life and interpersonal relations among the populace. Consequently, Nasrollah is relegated to the margins of the symbolic order within such a context. This condition can be interpreted through Lacanian theory, insofar as his estrangement and disaffiliation from society position him as a subject suffering from a rupture in his relation to the signifying chain, severed from the stabilizing signifiers anchoring the symbolic order and, hence, from the Other. In this regard, the absence of the Name-of-the-Father—as the foreclosure of the primordial signifier—or the loss of a coherent kinship structure as a foundational support functions as a metaphor for a hole, in a Lacanian sense, at the level of the symbolic order and signification, rendering the main character incapable of reconstructing his position within this order and thereby consigning him to a psychotic structure. The confrontation with his mother’s death, the final familial referent, exacerbates this collapse. In her absence, the only familial remnants—his father's mementos, namely a rifle and a target board—come to function as metaphorical traces of Lacanian objet petit a. Objet a, emblematic of a structural lack, operates as the cause of desire and is incessantly displaced onto other objects. Yet, in the film, these items constitute Nasrollah's sole anchors for signifying action and economic subsistence, thereby remaining irreplaceable. The rifle and the target board fail to stabilize his position in the socio-symbolic order; thus, Nasrollah persists in a state of lack. This psychic condition is further echoed in the film's formal structure. The filmmaker's camera persistently captures the main character's disorientation amid urban and peripheral mise-en-scènes through fragmented shots, thereby depicting an experience that is at once individual and social. This not only underscores the plight of a marginalized subject in Iran's developing society but also, from a psychoanalytic standpoint, reflects the subject's rupture from the signifying chain, situating him at a liminal surface between the imaginary, symbolic, and real orders. Moreover, the film features a character named Luti, who possesses an animal that he regards as his own child. Nasrollah establishes a connection with Luti, who, in a metaphorical sense, functions as a surrogate for the primordial signifier; however, Luti, too, perishes. Consequently, the main character's futile attempts to reconstitute relational bonds, coupled with his over-proximity to the objet petit a, ensnare him in a cycle of repetition, jouissance, and melancholic experience. At the end of the film, the subject's melancholic experience intensifies: he sells the rifle and the board and spends the meager sum he obtains on getting drunk. Nasrollah reemerges in the city, where the streets envelop him in a state of drunkenness and aimless wandering, a condition that can be read as metaphorically resembling the Lacanian real—that is, the domain of the impossible. Amir Naderi’s Requiem (1978), a film belonging to the Iranian New Wave cinema, offers a profound insight into the structural ruptures that mark its historical moment and shape the film’s narrative organization. A metaphorical reading of Requiem suggests that the story of Nasrollah—the recently released prisoner and central figure—operates simultaneously on a psychoanalytic plane and carries structural significance. This psychoanalytic dimension is articulated through the concepts of psychosis and melancholia. Drawing on Lacanian theory and proposing a conceptual framework for these conditions, the present study reads the main character’s individual–social disjunction as a disruption in the signifying chain and identifies its constitutive components within the filmic text. The findings demonstrate that Nasrollah emerges as a fragile subject upon encountering the external world, a fragility initially manifested in the experience of the father’s absence and the confrontation with the mother’s death. The persistence of loss subsequently intensifies in the absence of integration into the symbolic order, drawing the subject toward the objet petit a as its structural lack. Consequently, the narrative structure, characterization, and formal strategies—such as the use of urban mise-en-scène—not only reflect the fragmented historical conditions but also trace the trajectory of the character’s wandering and disintegration as a metaphor for psychosis and the progression toward a melancholic experience. Ultimately, this Lacanian perspective illuminates the significance of the film Requiem for examining psychic rupture at the individual level and in relation to transitional societies, paving the way for future analyses of Iranian cinema through psychoanalytic concepts such as psychosis and melancholia.