Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun Breath: Long Live the Homeland As A War Tale and The Crisis of Hegemonic Masculinity

During the 2000s in the Turkish cinema, in addition to films telling narsistic male heros’ extremely violent acts towards social problems and films in which hegemonic masculinity is reproduced, films questioning the embedded relationship among nationalism, militarism and masculinity have also been shot. This study focuses on Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun, one of the above-mentioned films, which exposes the male characters’ conflicting inner processes and allows presentations that can be commented within the concept of masculinity crisis. By means of an analysis of Nefes offering controversial representations in terms of hegemonic masculinity codes, this study aims to question through which images the masculinity crisis is exhibited and whether this representational structure related to the crisis reproduces values, rules and privileges regarding hegemonic masculinity.