Film Review: Witches

A spoiler free review. Trigger Warnings include psychosis, psychiatric ward, death, self harm and witch trials.

Witches is a 2024 British documentary film written and directed by Elizabeth Sankey. I came across this movie while going through the catalogue of movies on Mubi. Anything associated with witches always grabs my attention. I read the synopsis which said, "Director Elizabeth Sankey explores the connections between postpartum mental health and the portrayal of witches in Western society and popular culture. Sankey intertwines her personal experiences with historical and cinematic footage — while creating a new coven of women to reclaim their stories.“

After reading this, I thought, “This makes perfect sense. A lot of women, who were burnt after being called witches might be going through a psychosis of sorts. They were those women who were knowledgable and powerful. They knew how to heal people, use herbs the right way. No one understood them and their health and that led to the centuries of horrifying witch hunts and witch trials all over the world, the most well known being in Europe and the United States.”

The documentary focuses on the director, Elizabeth Sankey who narrates her experience of psychosis after she gave birth to her son. She compares herself to the witches in the medieval era and wonders, “If I were alive at that time, I would be burnt at stake as well.” She welcomes other women knowledgeable in the field of psychosis and who themselves had experienced the same. They share their experiences as well, which allow the viewers to understand the psyche of women who go through postpartum psychosis.

For someone who doesn't know about the term, postpartum psychosis occurs when a woman, after giving birth to her child starts having suicidal thoughts, thoughts of harming their baby, hallucinations, seeing evil spirits or devils in their visions, weird dreams, and other serious symptoms. All this leads them to a psychiatric ward which forces them to get rid of all these thoughts and become a caring mother again.

I liked the fact that this documentary, being a video essay in totality, kept on showing appropriate scenes from different movies spanning different eras of cinema. Each movie’s depiction of a witch or a mom having symptoms of psychosis perfectly represent what the speakers are trying to tell.

We have often heard and believed that mothers are always caring, nurturing and good at heart. Some won’t even believe that a mother of newly born child is having thoughts of killing their son or daughter, or… doing even worse things to them. That’s not because they want to do it. They are just scared of handling the responsibilities. Sadly, this issue is still not addressed properly, which has made a lot of mothers lose their life along with their children even today.

There’s nothing technically marvellous to appreciate about the film. It’s just a well made documentary which can stir up a conversation within yourself or with a group of people. Everyone might have different views but what really matters is, how all of this connects to the witches.

There have been thousands of deaths of women from centuries because they were accused of being witches. And in a way, it’s still happening now. The difference is, the women that are experiencing that are not being forced to admit that they’re witches. And if we think about it a little, the women who might be suffering with a psychosis in the medieval age might not have a term other than a witch to explain their condition.

This film has forced me to think a lot about the witches and the psyche of women in general. I always thought that the people might have found some women to be too powerful than their liking which led them to kill them. But after listening to these brilliant and vigilant women, I believe, maybe the women themselves believed they were witches. And that makes the trials so much more horrific and sorrowful. I loved watching this. Please watch it once and think on your own, were witches really witches, or just women with postpartum psychosis? This documentary is available to watch on Mubi.

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