Men, under the guise of religion, killed thousands of women across Europe in the 16th and 17th century, accusing them of witchcraft.Ĭoven of Sisters is a compelling movie. But there certainly was some women at the time who did the same as Ana and confessed to the absurd notion that they may be a witch in the hope of being spared, or sparing others.
The story is of course told through the prism of today’s perspective, so some of what is said in the film resembles more today’s discourse, especially in the sequence where the old woman advises Ana on how to defeat Rostegui, when she is bathing her (which felt more like a gratuitous nude sequence). Rostegui, in fact, describes the story of the dancing plague in Strasbourg of 1518, started by a woman he says, to prove that a woman dancing is the devil's work.
It is women's liberty that the Inquisition wants to quash, hiding their free-flowing hair and forbidding dancing. Spoken in Basque and Castilian Spanish, the film hints at the suppression of regional culture and language during the Spanish Inquisition, but it is more concerned with the way women were treated. Understanding Rostegui’s obsession with the Witches’ Sabbath and his not-so-repressed sexual desires, Ana imagines a plan with her friends to tell him the stories he wants to hear, like Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights. The women are alone, defenseless against armed soldiers. Rostegui and his delegation of priests and soldiers enter the village just as the men of the community, all sailors, have set sail. He arrives at a new seaside village, welcomed by the young local priest (Asier Oruesagasti), who despite having known all the villagers all his life, will never object to anything Rostegui will decide.
He wants to witness the Witches’ Sabbath, strongly believing its existence, and has gone on a killing spree to see it with his own eyes. The man in question is an Inquisition cleric Rostegui, played by Álex Brendemühl. As these opening images suggest, this is the story of a man with a deluded obsession. The original title of the film, “Akelarre,” is the Basque word for Witches’ Sabbath. “How many more deaths” one asks, to which the other replies that he will not be satisfied until they have revealed the secrets of the Witches’ Sabbath to him. The figure of a woman is burning, while two men look on.