Světlonoc

All the typical trappings of witchcraft – the naked moonlit rituals, the familiar relationship with wolves and snakes, the sexual abandon, the knowledge and use of herbs, the concealed baldness, the mutated or murdered livestock, the dancing around bonfires, the missing children – are present and correct in NIGHTSIREN, but are mostly rationalised and all reconfigured as something harmless. For this is a film less about female malefactors than about the villagers’ patriarchal structures and deep-seated misogynies (some internalised by the local women themselves) which suppress difference and readily blame innocent women. (Anton Bitel, Projected Figures)