In the late 19th century, on the remote island of Chiloé, teenage Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo) works as a servant for a German colonist farming family. Speaking their language and practising their Christian religion, she is cut off from her Huilliche roots. When the farm’s patriarch brutally turns on Rosa's father, she sets out for justice, rejecting Christianity and returning to her culture’s spiritual roots, seeking help from Recta Provincia, a powerful organisation of sorcerers.
Earthy and lugubrious, the film’s verdant themes of female empowerment, grief, mystery, and magic speak to the complexity of acknowledging and rejecting colonial occupation. Based on true events in Chilote history, Sorcery, subtle and sorrowful, weaves a darkly evocative tale of anti-colonial vengeance.
"★★★★ The anticolonial message is clear, but kept subtle and sorrowful, always cloaked in a solemnity emanating primarily from Caileo’s watchful performance" Phil Hoad, The Guardian
"If revenge is a dish well served cold, Christopher Murray’s Sorcery posits that it’s even better when infused with the righteous fury of a colonised people" Leila Latif, Sight and Sound