Pagans
2019 · 10m · United States
Directed by Iqbal Ahmed
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, mythic, tender
An intimate glimpse into a cross-generational community of Southern Californian witches, druids, wizards, sacred drummers and Christo-pagans living ordinary lives steeped in ceremony.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects witchcraft docs to be either campy or self-serious; Ahmed threads a needle nobody asked for by treating ceremony as *boring* in the best way—just people living, which somehow makes the magic realer than any spectacle could.
A formally restrained portrait that knows exactly how to hold space—the editing breathes where it should, the interviews nest into daily life without commentary, and it inherits a lineage of intimate ethnographic work while resisting the urge to exoticize its subjects.
The decision to let the camera linger on mundane gestures—hands preparing food, someone adjusting their altar in morning light—is what separates this from standard community portraiture; that unhurried attention is what makes the spiritual feel lived rather than performed.