An interview with Elizabeth Sankey

Elizabeth Sankey’s documentary Witches is a powerful exploration of the portrayal of witches in cinema, reflecting society’s deeper views on women, motherhood, and mental health. Using her own experiences as a lens, Sankey weaves together a rich tapestry of film history, personal testimony, and critical analysis. From The Wizard of Oz to Suspiria, and Rosemary’s Baby to Girl, Interrupted, the film delves into the cultural underpinnings of how witches, or at times simply women experiencing mental illness have been represented and how these portrayals resonate with societal norms and expectations of women.

As mothers working in the film and TV industry, many of us at Cinemamas know firsthand the challenges of navigating careers, mental health, and motherhood. Sankey’s deeply personal and universal exploration aligns closely with the topics we frequently address in our community. Following our recent webinar with Action on Postpartum Psychosis, this conversation feels especially timely and relevant.

With Witches released on MUBI on Friday, November 22nd, and having already garnered accolades, including two BIFA nominations, we’re thrilled to speak with Sankey about her creative journey, her experiences with motherhood and mental health, and the deeper cultural insights her film uncovers.

Witches is a deeply personal documentary. Can you share what led you to explore the connection between the portrayal of witches in cinema and your own experiences with motherhood and mental health?

I've always loved witches, and I'd always wanted to make something about witches. Then in 2020, after giving birth to my son, I was hospitalised due to mental illness. I spent eight weeks in a psychiatric ward with my newborn baby. After I was released I started reading about perinatal mental health illness because I wanted to understand what had happened to me, and why no one seemed to talk about these conditions. And I started to see interesting links to those illnesses and the role of women in medicine, the history of medicine, and the witch trials of the 16th century. And how all of that has also influenced the way women are portrayed in popular culture in terms of being good and bad, and it being this very, very binary thing. And the amount of shame and guilt women feel as a result.

At the same time, I was still very much recovering, and was having a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that the person who'd had that illness had been me. I wanted to distance myself from her as much as possible and so I talked about myself in terms of "the bad me" and "the good me". I was finding it very difficult to accept that “bad me”. But during therapy, I started to realise that I had to find a way to incorporate her into me, and be okay with that. And so the film became a process of trying to do that. And the people, the characters, the narrative that I really connected to was witches because it felt like a uniquely female, feminine world that was also very inclusive of outsiders and people being mad and weird and strange. It was a safe place for me to live in while I recovered, alongside these other women who had been in similar situations to mine. Both real and fictional.

It was also about trying to find other women who were messy and witchy, and had not conformed the way that society wanted them to conform. I wanted to turn them into - I don't want to say “role models”, because I hate the idea of a woman ever having to be a role model - but I wanted to emulate them. There’s that inspiration they bring of: "you know what, it's okay to be weird and messy and witchy and dark and haunted and mad." And I fell in love with them.

The film draws on a rich archive of film clips spanning decades. How did you choose which films to include, and were there any representations that surprised or resonated with you the most? Had you been thinking about these films for some time?

It started off as just films about witches. And I looked at films from every era. It was very interesting to go back and look at older material – films from the 60s and 70s like THE CITY OF THE DEAD, THE DEVILS, WITCHFINDER GENERAL. I think the oldest film in it is HAXAN, or maybe THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC which are both from the 1920s. Then I also included some films that had depictions of women with mental health issues, and psychiatric wards. And then later on in the process I was digging up films like THE SNAKE PIT which is from 1948 and has Olivia de Havilland playing a woman who finds herself in a psych ward and can't remember how she got there. It was fascinating to look at these early depictions of mental health issues in women and see that very little has changed. But in general, I was just looking for clips and scenes that connected with my experience. I always have folders on Premiere of all the clips I have grabbed from films, and I had so many that were just like "woman crying in bathtub, woman healing another woman, woman doing magic". But I was also looking at clips of nature, storms, weather, and abstract moments or scenes that resonated with me. So I was watching all these films and looking for the themes of the film - witches, healing, mental illness - but also just anything I saw that illustrated something I felt during that time but couldn't articulate with words. 

Historically, witches have been symbolic of societal fears and prejudices. How do you think these portrayals reflect the pressures placed on women, particularly mothers, in today’s society?

As with many women my experience of becoming an adult has been dogged by the pressure to be constantly comparing myself to a fictional, impossible, ideal of what a woman should be. This continued into motherhood. I was told I had to be a mother, and when I was a mother, I had to be a perfect mother, submissive and obsessed with my child. And then I was supposed to go back to work and have a career and work like I wasn’t a mother, and then when I started to age I must hide or conceal all the signs of aging and try and stay forever youthful. And I must be a good wife and friend and daughter. Every woman is expected to fulfill this ideal, and we are judged if we do not. Most devastatingly by ourselves. A big part of the film, and indeed my illness, was the narrow and suffocating way that culture portrays women. It is actually very prescriptive - we are told very clearly how we should and shouldn’t behave. And so I wanted to take those images and characters that are witchy and don’t behave “correctly” and say that actually these women aren’t scary, they are normal and real. And perhaps even aspirational. For example in the film The Craft we are supposed to come away from it thinking that Sarah is the hero, as she is the good witch. But I would much rather be Nancy, it is she who we think about decades later, who stays with us, who articulates something about our power, magic and darkness as women that we are supposed to avoid but that maybe we want to explore. 

In Witches, you place your personal experiences alongside academic and cultural commentary. How did you balance vulnerability with the analytical aspects of your storytelling?

It was gradual - I was watching all the films about witches I could find, and also reaching out to historians, medical professionals and academics. I had a theory that maybe some of the ‘voluntary confessions’ I had read about could have been linked to postpartum mental health issues, but it wasn’t until I talked to Marion Gibson that the link firmed up. And then I thought about how I would have behaved if I had been alive back then. What would my confession have been? And it just made sense to share my story that way. I also felt like if I was asking the other people in the film to be so brave and open and honest when sharing their stories I had to be so too. And also I was the one in control of the film from start to finish so I knew I could comfortably go to those darker places and memories on screen, to save me having to ask them to do so.

At Cinemamas, we talk a lot about the feeling of isolation mothers in the industry can feel. Did you experience this?

To be honest, I have not felt isolated as a mother in the industry. But I think that is because I have been really lucky to be in a position where I can pick my crew and say that I want the majority of the people working on the film to be women. My DOP for the film, Chloe Thomson was breastfeeding on set, my son came to set every day, and it all felt very natural and easy. But I understand that my situation is unusual.

Mental health, especially perinatal or postpartum mental health, is not talked about enough in the media, or in society as a whole. What do you hope Witches contributes to this conversation, and how can the film challenge the stigma around mental health and motherhood?

I really wanted the film to feel, and look, like a spell book. I wanted it to be beautiful and powerful and feminine, but in a way that we don’t see much on screen. To me it is like the inside of my mind - dark, mad, and mystical. I was really trying to think about how I would have wanted motherhood to be described to me before I gave birth - not neat and pink and pretty, but wild and bloody and brutal, while still overwhelmingly full of love and beauty. And it has been so wonderful to see the film being shared the way a spell book would be. I see people feeling a great sense of ownership of the film, and they take it out into the world and talk about it to their respective communities, or covens. I don’t think our patriarchal society is going to change - sadly - but I do think a grassroots rebellion is possible. 

Peer support is central to communities like Cinemamas. How has connecting with others who share similar experiences helped you personally, and what role does peer support play in creating a healthier industry?

In the Malleus Maleficarum they wrote that any women who meet together in a group are witches. Women sitting and talking is threatening to the patriarchy, which to me shows that it is a good thing! The idea of “gossip” too is derided, but actually gossip serves a great purpose, it is women sharing knowledge and information, and also even warning each other about a man or a situation they must be careful of. For me, women talking about their emotions and experiences is immensely powerful and I think we should do more of it.

Your film reflects a love of cinema as well as a critical look at its history. How has your relationship with film or your experience of being a filmmaker evolved through the process of creating Witches?

One of the things that struck me while making the film is how white and straight cinema is, which of course we all know, but trying to find films that depict the lived experiences of non-white women or queer women, especially in this context, is near impossible. It is shocking. When we were looking for contributors for the film we asked so many women from so many different backgrounds, but the fact is, these illnesses are really scary to talk about publicly. The stigma is suffocating. And you see that in the film, even Dr. Trudi Seneviratne, one of the leading medical practitioners in her field in the UK, who has saved so many lives at her mother and baby unit, has talked to the government relentlessly about getting more help and support for women going through these illnesses. And been successful in doing that, in raising awareness and getting funding. Even she has never spoken about her personal experience of postpartum psychosis publicly before this film. And as she says, that’s because of stigma. It drove home to me, once again, how important it is that everyone has the chance to tell their story, and the power of cinema and popular culture (both in a positive and a negative way) to affect how we see ourselves and each other. 

With Witches screening at Tribeca, the London Film Festival, and now released on MUBI, what do you hope audiences, particularly mothers in the film and TV industry, take away from it?

One thing I didn’t expect would happen from the film is that women would say things like, “well now I definitely don't want children” or “off to get my tubes tied!”, and almost use the film as a justification or explanation for their choice. I think that is fascinating. Because all we get is endless pressure to have kids, but we are not told the real truth about the experience or the dangers involved. And we definitely don't receive adequate emotional, medical or economical support if we do have kids. I am so happy I am a mother - it was 100% the right choice for me. It has enriched my life and filled it with love, but of course it isn’t for everyone. I think we need to see more childfree/childless women in our society being celebrated and supported, and I hope our film can be part of that conversation. And I hope there will be more films made that explore that very interesting and rich subject! 

Witches is now streaming on MUBI.