Direction: Joanna Pardos
Production: 3Cat and Sàpiens
Country: Spain
Year: 2023
Genre: Documentary
Broadcast channel: TV3
Duration: 60’
SYNOPSIS
“Witches, the big lie”: a historical thriller with elements of true crime. They could be poor women, alone, strong-willed, independent, defiant, with mental health problems or with unconventional lives. Or not even that, in many cases. Thousands of women accused and tried for witchcraft, in rural Catalonia, died by hanging or burning after rigged trials and terrible torture.
Obviously, they weren’t witches: they were women, and they died because their lives didn’t fit the norm. Scapegoats of a tremendously sexist society. The documentary provides the testimony of current women who have suffered today the same attitudes that the hunters inflicted on their victims accused of witchcraft. Finally, and in a third narrative line, we will follow the preparation of the traditional theater work of the Grup de Bruixes de Viladrau, with the women who play the victims of the hunt in that Osona town, one of the most punished for witchcraft trials.
