Witches (2024) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐
Examines the relationship between cinematic portrayals of witches and postpartum depression, utilizing film history footage alongside personal testimony.
Combining deeply personal and painful stories from women who have suffered greatly through postpartum and depression with clips of the stigmatizing views of witches through film history, this juxtaposition serves to destigmatize maternal mental health issues by drawing symbolic parallels between the isolation, societal judgment, and “unruly womanhood” often attributed to witches and the very real emotional struggles faced by these women and begs the question: why is there more being done?
Sankey employs her own personal struggle to lay the groundwork for this film that also features therapists, heads of women’s organizations and friends. In an exploration to remove the shame and blind eyes of the medical industry at large for women, Sankey uses what we’ve been told about “witchy women”, equating them with hysteria and misunderstanding and society’s reluctance to ever go too deep lest the figure out that they were not only wrong, but ill-equipped to make such judgements.
The film does incredible work creating empathy around maternal healthcare and it adjacent mental health struggles and shines a light on the tragic story of Dave Emson who’s wife Daksha stabbed their 3-month old daughter Freya to death and burned herself and Freya alive in their bedroom. Dave has started campaigning for more mental health focus on women’s postpartum healthcare.
It’s emotional, and deeply disheartening that the burden of shame society has casted on women at such a vulnerable stage in their lives makes it almost impossible to share their stories, but Sankey is off to a great start in creating that space.
Witches had it’s UK Premiere on October 12th.
Mo Moshaty is a horror writer, lecturer and producer. As a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and life long horror fan, Mo has lectured with Prairie View A&M Film & TV Program as a Keynote, BAFSS Horror Studies Sig and The University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. Mo has partnered with horror giant, Shudder Channel, to co-produce the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival 2021 and 2022 with Nyx Horror Collective and her literary work “Love the Sinner” was published with Brigid’s Gate Press in July of 2023 and her two volume collection, “Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment will be published with Tenebrous Press in 2025. Mo is the creator and Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and the Founder of Mourning Manor Media.
Mo Moshaty is an acclaimed horror writer, lecturer, and producer whose work combines visceral storytelling with the psychological insight of her Cognitive Behavioral Therapy background. She has lectured internationally, including as a keynote speaker at Nightmares from Monkeypaw: A Jordan Peele Symposium (Prairie View A&M), No Return: A Yellowjackets Symposium (Horror Studies BAFSS Sig), The Whole Damn Swarm: Celebrating 30 Years of Candyman (University of California), and with the Centre for the History of the Gothic (University of Sheffield). Mo has also presented at the BFI, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Brain Binge on women’s trauma in horror cinema, Cine-Excess on The Creepy Kid Horror Subgenre and Mother/Daughter Trauma in Horror, and Romancing the Gothic on Cosmic Horror’s Havoc on The Body Electric Her short film, 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror, won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Short Film. As a core producer with Nyx Horror Collective, Mo co-created the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Fest and partnered with Shudder in 2021 and 2022, while also establishing a Stowe Story Labs fellowship supporting women creatives over 40+ in horror. A member of the Black Women in Horror Class of 2023 and featured in 160 Black Women in Horror, Mo’s short fiction appears in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales (Brigid’s Gate Press) and 206 Word Stories (Bag O’ Bones Press). Her debut novella, Love the Sinner, was released July 5, 2024, with Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment released in October 2025. The first of her five-volume non-fiction series, The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife, will be released in 2027 from Tenebrous Press. As the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and founder of Mourning Manor Media, Mo champions marginalized voices in horror. Under her leadership, NightTide plans to launch a film festival in 2028, furthering her mission to reshape the genre through inclusivity and representation.
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