The Burning Times
1990 · 56m · Canada
Directed by Donna Read
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
Historians revisit Europe's witch trials to ask how centuries-old persecution connects to modern violence against women and environmental harm.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A documentary that connects witch trials to modern misogyny feels like the obvious read—but Read's refusal to let the archive speak for itself, instead letting silence and archival gaps do the heavy lifting, is genuinely uncanny in a way most 'relevant' essays aren't.
This is the kind of historical documentary that understands its own lineage—the essay film, the feminist historiography project—and executes with the formal rigor those traditions demand; the 56-minute runtime suggests every choice of what to show and what to withhold has been considered.
The decision to let historians narrate over fragmentary images rather than constructing a seamless visual narrative creates an estrangement effect that lets viewers sit with discomfort instead of resolving it—a small formal choice that transforms how the material lands.