Some Stories Around Witches

The film does not deal with witchcraft as a practice. It depicts the humanitarian crisis surrounding the cases of witch hunting, taking us closer to the people who have been accused, ostracized and tortured, and the circumstances that have led to it. The film primarily engages with three cases from Odisha, India, which find resonance in other parts of the country as well. A teenage girl kills an old woman, one of her relatives, thinking that she is a witch and the cause of her father’s death. A village turns into a mob over night to kill three people, a man and two women, who were identified as witches by a witch doctor. A family believed to bring ill-fate are ostracized and threatened after they cook meat. Talking about the nuances of the incidents, the film tries to explore the politics of witch hunting - how superstitions, greed, ignorance, fear, insecurity, power in combination can result in immense suffering.