Häxan

“My film has no continuing story, no narrative; perhaps the best way to describe it is as a cultural-historical lecture through images.” This is how director Benjamin Christensen defined Häxan, a hybrid dramatic documentary that traces the history of witchcraft across the centuries. The film takes as its starting point a medieval handbook for identifying witches and unfolds in seven chapters, each depicting different practices of sorcery. Gradually, its focus narrows to women—their persecution, the accusations of witchcraft leveled against them, and the brutal methods prescribed to rid them of their supposed curses. Visually spellbinding in its own right, Häxan transforms medieval imagery into cinema with equal measures of wonder and terror. A long-neglected classic, rarely screened in recent decades—not to be missed.