Overview: 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.
Witches(2024): A Searing Examination of Medical Gaslighting and Women's Silenced Narratives
Elizabeth Sankey's documentary "Witches" is not just a film about historical persecution. It's a scathing...
Witches(2024): A Searing Examination of Medical Gaslighting and Women's Silenced Narratives
Elizabeth Sankey's documentary "Witches" is not just a film about historical persecution. It's a scathing indictment of how society systematically dismisses women's experiences, particularly in medical contexts.
Using a brilliant collage of film clips and intimate personal testimonies, Sankey traces the horrifying continuum from medieval witch hunts to contemporary medical gaslighting. The film powerfully demonstrates how women's pain - especially around reproductive health - has been consistently minimized, misunderstood, and mythologized.
The documentary's focus on postpartum psychosis reveals a stark truth: women's mental health experiences are still treated as aberrant, mysterious, even supernatural. By juxtaposing historical witch trials with modern medical practices, Sankey exposes a chilling constant: women are rarely believed about their own bodies.
This systemic dismissal isn't abstract. It's deadly. Pharmaceutical research has historically excluded women, heart attack symptoms are still primarily understood through male physiological models, and conditions like endometriosis take an average of eight years to diagnose - primarily because women's pain is not taken seriously.
"Witches" is more than a documentary. It's a necessary confrontation with how institutional misogyny operates, how it silences, and how it continues to harm.
