This article aims to investigate the relationship between movie representation of disasters and sharing of emotions that have been experienced personally in real emergency situations. The theme is addressed in the first place referring to clinical observations and accounts of survivors, which explicitly use some images from specific films in their narratives. The hypothesis explored here is that the film genre known as disaster movie provides to individuals in distress in our culture some representations and symbolic tools which are useful to encode exceptional events and to cope with and share the emotions aroused by them. A thorough knowledge of the genre can therefore help to better listen, understand and support the narratives of the people who survived to serious emergencies and now need social legitimization and acceptation of their emotions.