This article focuses on the representational form of the silent female that emerged in Turkish cinema after the mid-1990s. It not only explores the thematic and formal tendencies that the silent female characters share, but also reveals the different forms of verbal and visual control that is maintained over them by the filmic elements. Drawing upon representative examples, different types of silence -silencing silence, resisting silence, complete silence and speaking silence- in the new cinema are discussed on the verbal and visual levels. A close reading of the film Gemide (On Board) is drawn upon in order to reveal in detail the thematic and formal conventions of the most prevalent type, silencing silence.