Friendship from the point of view of Aristotelian ethics in the movie, Everyone Knows the work of Asghar Farhadi

In his Poetics, Aristotle considered drama as an imitation of human lives. It can be concluded that cinema as an important dramatic art is not exempt from this rule. Therefore, since cinema is in the position of imitating human lives, it narrates stories that are similar to these lives. On the other hand, philosophy raises fundamental and great questions about life. Therefore, cinema, which as a dramatic art is similar to life in its unique ways and tools, takes a path similar to philosophy in presenting fundamental questions of life and finding answers to them. So, one of the proper ways to understand movies is to study the philosophical questions that are raised in these movies and the unique answers that the movies give to these philosophical questions. The present research has shown how in the movie Everybody Knows by Asghar Farhadi, something similar to the answer to the fundamental philosophical questions on the subject of friendship has been provided. For this purpose, the theoretical foundations of Aristotelian ethics (mainly in Nicomachean ethics and partly also in Eudemean ethics) have been used, which has specifically addressed the issue of friendship in important chapters. The problem of this article is to first examine the place of friendship and its types within the system of Aristotelian ethics in the theoretical foundations section and then to study the Aristotelian philosophy of friendship in the movie Everybody Knows by Asghar Farhadi based on mentioned theoretical foundations. The questions of this research are that first of all, in the film, Everyone Knows how all kinds of friendships are drawn from Aristotle's point of view. Secondly, in the film, Everybody Knows what is the relationship between Aristotle’s view of kinds of friendship and the concept of happiness? And thirdly, in the film, Everybody Knows what is the relationship between Aristotle's view of friendship and the concept of external good. The aim of this research is to be able to gain a better understanding of one of the most important discussions of Aristotle in his ethics, namely friendship, and to make this better philosophical understanding by relying on the study of an important film which one of the main topics of it is friendship. In this way, through a valid philosophical reading, a better understanding of the film is obtained. This research is a qualitative research and has been obtained by descriptive-analytical method and by studying library resources. The result of this research shows that although the movie Everybody Knows can be studied with Aristotle's view of friendship in its ethics, at the same time, it is not completely compatible with the Aristotelian view and even has its independent opinion about friendship in the view of ethics.The approach of this research, in its philosophical foundations, is to explain the concepts of happiness and the relationship between happiness and the moral middle ground from Aristotle's point of view, and then to define the moral aspect of the selfish and altruistic aspects of pity in Aristotelian friendship, and finally to explain the types of Aristotelian friendship with the above principles. Also, in the study of the film, the approach of the current article is to explore the friendship relationships of the characters in the context of the narrative plot of the film in order to show to what extent the theme of friendship in this film is consistent with the Aristotelian view of friendship. and where does it separate from this Aristotelian point of view.