Witches begins as an innocuous exploration into witchery: how they’re depicted and why they’re alluring. Director Elizabeth Sankey builds an amusing collage of witches from films like The Craft and shows like Bewitched. At this point, you expect it to go a certain way–it resembles the many documentaries that are delightful yet detached, educational yet nowhere near novel. But then it makes a fearless and interesting turn. Sankey tells a deeply personal story about her struggles with childbirth and motherhood, connects it to how past societies crucified witches (many of whom were misunderstood and misdiagnosed mothers), and invites friends, experts, doctors, and historians in on the conversation to create something more holistic, historical, and honest than your typical documentary. It’s equal parts moving and enlightening, but most importantly it rouses you into empathy and action. Hopefully, the belittling of the child-bearing and child-rearing experience ends now.
"So the film mutates a little bit from playful essay to necessary advocacy doc, yet in its final passages Sankey also manages to ingeniously thread the needle between her two subjects."
— David Jenkins
"Still, from the maelstrom of madness and horror there emerges hope. Ultimately, Witches is a film that is as much about love as Sankey’s earlier film, if not more so."
— Catherine Wheatley
Elizabeth Sankey's deeply personal documentary examines the relationship between the cinematic portrayals of witches and the all-too-real experiences of postpartum depression by utilizing footage that spans the entirety of film history alongside heartrending personal testimony.
Using movie examples and her own experience with mental illness, filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey explores the cultural depiction of witches and how it ties to the rampant misunderstanding of motherhood.
The fact that post-partum depression and psychosis remain largely misunderstood and mistreated in the year 2025.
Next time someone calls me a witch, I’m taking that as a compliment.
