AN OVERDUE FILM WHERE THE WITCHES BURN BACK

Librarians tell a new colleague of the book that burned so many, using motion graphic animation for the true tale-within-a-tale, in this overdue film where the witches get to burn back. A little Princess Bride, a dash of Drunk History, all to reclaim the narrative.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

This film came to me in a literal dream.

For nearly 400 years one book, The Malleus Maleficarum,
outsold only by The Bible, served as a tool to torture and murder women.

Over 100,000 were killed because of it, and their names were largely lost to history. Yet the man and the story behind the book are a prime example of how we have always sorely lacked media literacy.

After learning about this book in a podcast, I wrote a post about it and was promptly informed by some witchy friends that I would be making a movie about it. I laughed it off, 1485 Austria seeming beyond my budgetary reach.

But that night, I had a dream I was introducing my film where "the witches burned back." The film seemed to play before my eyes, and I wrote it all down once I woke.

Not long after, I was at a fan convention signing next to Julian Richings (Death in Supernatural), and I could not stop staring. Once I told him he'd been in my dream I of course had to explain myself, but I was thrilled that he was immediately drawn to the tale as well. That encouraged me to reach out to Cissy Jones (BAFTA winner) as she'd also been in my dream. Seconds after I sent her a message on Instagram, she replied. In fact, each person who'd appeared in my dream was enthusiastically on board, so now my cast includes some of the biggest names in VO.

Now, less than a year after my dream, we've made it a deliciously beautiful reality and amassed a series-worth of other historical narratives that need reclaiming. Perhaps a new dream has started.

I hope this long overdue retaking of the quill
can remind us to question sources’ motivations moving forward. If nothing else, it will finally get in a justified mocking of the prototypical troll, Heinrich Kramer.