Witches review – impressive study of postpartum psychosis recovery equated to witchcraft

This deeply personal, essayistic film by Elizabeth Sankey impressively manages to be very moving but never mawkish, raw but also surgically precise. It is quite free-ranging in its scope, but is essentially about how witches and their history overlaps with postpartum depression on the one hand and psychosis on the other, all told through the filter of Sankey’s own experience. Looking straight into the camera, she explains how she was engulfed by anxiety and depression after the birth of her son in 2020 during the Covid pandemic; after several trips to A&E and crisis moments, she ended up in a special psychiatric ward for mothers and children.

Sankey says she made it through thanks to therapy and support from other patients, which she likens to the formation of covens in witchcraft lore. The resulting film records not just her story but that of friends and professionals, from people who started support groups to the actor Sophia di Martino (from TV’s Loki), and even a female doctor specialising in perinatal care who struggled to persuade other doctors that she wasn’t delusional, and really was a medical professional, when she started experiencing the very symptoms she’d treated in others for years.

The Kafkaesque echo chamber of paranoia and patriarchal oppression is deftly illustrated by the mosaic of footage Sankey edits together, tiny snippets excerpted from all manner of films about witches, new mothers and women enduring mental health crises. Cuts are culled from witch-themed films such as Häxan (1922), Witchfinder General (1968), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Witch (2015); Sankey also weaves in bits from Girl, Interrupted (1999), The Snake Pit (1948) and Jane Eyre (1943) that touch on the themes of mental health. All in all, this is a powerful example of a bricolage-like editing technique that relies heavily on exploiting the copyright laws around fair use to create a prismatic, provocative style of cinema that’s very 21st century.

• Witches is on Mubi from 22 November.