A deeply personal and well-researched film essay on motherhood and mental illness
Movie
United Kingdom
English
Documentary
2024
ELIZABETH SANKEY, FEMALE DIRECTOR
Catherine Cho, David Emson, Elizabeth Sankey
90 min
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.