Abstract

Mental illnesses are becoming increasingly visible in society. The dissemination of information about them is a necessity in order to dismantle misinformation. Cinema, as an element of audiovisual representation of the human being in its entirety, plays a role in portraying psychopathologies. Through the content we consume, we form an opinion about what we see, and we carry that into our social circles. Thus, the way cinema portrays mental illnesses will contribute to how the public interprets and understands them. Through a sample selected from a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria applied on the IMDB platform, some films were analyzed with the aim of understanding how they represent anxiety, using an analysis grid based on scientific aspects derived from the DSM-5 Manual. From the narrative exposition and the techno-aesthetic aspects, it was concluded that the representation of anxiety in cinema is not linear; there are credible points and points where nothing relates to psychopathology. The shots used are similar in the portrayal of the feelings conveyed by the characters, and the way psychopathology is conveyed determines the choice of film aesthetics used.