agmtw logo
search

Witches (2024)

Witches (2024)

7.3

A deeply personal and well-researched film essay on motherhood and mental illness

Movie

United Kingdom
English
Documentary
2024
imdb
rt
wiki

TLDR

Next time someone calls me a witch, I’m taking that as a compliment.

What it's about

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 take

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.

What stands out

The fact that post-partum depression and psychosis remain largely misunderstood and mistreated in the year 2025.

UP NEXT 

UP NEXT 

UP NEXT 

More like this in

Hail Satan? (2019)

Forget everything you think you know about the Satanic Temple

8.0

The Edge of Democracy (2019)

Mixing personal history with hardcore journalism, this is the story of Brazil's fragile democracy.

9.0

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)

A darkly hilarious portrait of the inevitability of death

7.9

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (2017)

Watch Jim Carrey take method acting to the extreme as he transforms into his idol Andy Kaufmann.

9.2

Honeyland (2019)

A cinematic achievement in the portrayal of the last wild beekeeper in Europe

9.3

Uppity: The Willy T. Ribbs Story (2020)

The tale of a forgotten champion

8.2

The Social Dilemma (2020)

How social media algorithms harm society, as explained by their inventors

8.0

Tell Me Who I Am (2019)

A devastating, unlikely story

8.2

American Animals (2018)

8.0

Close-Up (1990)

An ingenious docufiction classic and a passionate examination of storytelling and cinema

9.0

Curated by humans, not algorithms.

agmtw logo

© 2025 agoodmovietowatch, all rights reserved.