Healers, Midwives, Witches

Directed by Aysıla Köse

Healers, Midwives, Witches is an experimental documentary that traces connections between village midwives and the figures of healers and witches found in historical archives. Moving between archival engravings from London and intimate conversations with the filmmaker’s grandmother and great-aunt, former midwives in rural southeast Turkey, the film brings different times and places into dialogue. Through archives and oral histories, recurring gestures, rituals, and ways of care reappear across centuries. The film approaches the witch not as a myth, but as a figure shaped by fear, control, and misogyny, carried forward through women’s memory, labour, and survival.