Determined to use her art to call attention to current circumstances and weave them into her stories, writer/director Elle Callahan’s sophomore feature, Witch Hunt, serves as a reflection of her love for magic and a projection of how she sees the world today; particularly her frustration by how “witches” are more often than not represented as villains.
Starring Gideon Adlon (The Craft: Legacy), Abigail Cowen (“Stranger Things”, “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”), Christian Camargo (“Dexter”, “Penny Dreadful”) and Elizabeth Mitchell (“Lost”, The Purge: Election Year), Witch Hunt is set in a modern-day America where witches are known to live among us and witchcraft is illegal. Amidst the turmoil Claire (Adlon), a sheltered teenager, must face her own demons and prejudices as she helps two young witches evade law enforcement and cross the southern border to asylum in Mexico.
Ahead of the film’s release in theatres, on demand and digital this Friday, October 1, 2021, SCREAM sat down with Callahan who explained why she chose to implant real witchcraft in the current political climate and treat it like any other kind of minority group in America, exploring how it would be oppressed, controlled, and feared – not a far cry from how witches were treated in the 1700s.
Words: Howard Gorman
