I’ve spent the last two years cradled in a small mountain town in the Pyrenees, the land that forged the blood of my ancestors. I swear they whisper to me at night, half-smoke and half-memory, and for a person who has had to burn the bridges of life mid-crossing, the eternal after-scent of smoke has made a home in my lungs. Nowhere have the embers of time and memory been spilled more than on the night of Sant Joan (St. John in English), a Catalan pagan holiday when the shortest night of the year turns saintly memory into divine portals to our past and the fabled witches of fire come out to cast their rituals.
With Per Bruixa i Metzinera (English title: The Sorceress’s Echo), Catalan filmmaker Marc Camardons set out to visualize the portals once held like a secret in the chest of Catalan lineages. In this stunning short film, presented on the world’s stage at Cannes, our protagonist is at home, watching the mountains, when a raging fire causes her to call the emergency line — only the fire is one that apparently only she can see.
Throughout the film, we see how time doesn’t end or begin for our protagonist — it burns, in the slow, idle way that a heatwave in Spain gives way to playing cards at the local bar. Tradition in the wake of Sant Joan is a living, breathing thing, and our protagonist finds herself wading deeper into the flames of the truth of her witchy ancestry with the help of her mother and her friends (a suspiciously coven-like organism).
I had the absolute honor of interviewing Camardons on the film’s debut, where we spoke of the traditions of Sant Joan, the role of women in Catalan folklore & post-Catholic Spain, and how his Cannes premiere was both sentimental achievement and daring political act.
I hope you’ll sit around our fire and tend to the embers as we teach you of the mountain ghosts of our homeland.
BV: Tell me, for those in our audience who don’t know, about the night of Sant Joan. What are the traditions surrounding it, why is it culturally significant, and what does the fire mean to you? Why did you decide to create a film about it?
MM: The night of Sant Joan is a very important celebration in the Pyrenees. Within Catalan culture, it is a magical night, traditionally seen as a time to purify and burn away the year that has passed in order to welcome the new one. In this tradition, fire holds vital importance, as it is the transformative, purifying element, the one that destroys in order to make way for the new.
According to the traditions of our grandmothers, now almost forgotten, the herbs that had not been used during the year had to be burned on the night of Sant Joan. Then, at dawn the next day, new herbs were gathered to be used throughout the coming year. This story, and many others we have left behind, were what inspired me to tell this tale to try to recover the narrative, the legends, the oral histories — to make a collective effort to believe once more in traditional magic, in the tales that, as children, made us imagine different worlds full of possibility.
BV: If you could, tell me about women’s role in Catalan folklore. Did the mountain where the fire appears feel like an overwhelming and looming female presence around the story, or was it just a signal to the protagonist of the wildfire that was yet to come for her? Why did you choose to center this specific woman’s story throughout the short? Do you feel that traditional Catalan folklore tends to mythologize women, and do you feel like Catalan culture now does the same?
MM: In life in the Pyrenees, and not only in Catalan folklore, the figure of the matriarch has held great importance. Women were a symbol of family unity, the ones who held the home together during the harsh nights in the mountains, those who kept daily life going in a wild and often hostile environment.
However, in folklore, the problem has been the victimization and criminalization of women. When a woman was strong, independent, or lived outside the roles defined by society, she was easily labeled a witch. Stepping outside the accepted lines often meant condemnation. This created a collective fear that still lingers today, shaping the way society and popular narrative have viewed women.
This stigma still haunts us. Symbols shift, but they do not disappear. The image of the witch lives on, projected onto those who live on the margins, those who do not follow the dominant pattern. In this sense, the fire in the short film symbolizes exactly that: this group of people, these outsiders, who find in the fire, and in the community that gathers around it, a safe space where they can be themselves, free and unafraid.
BV: Why did you choose magical realism as the vehicle to explore the theme of belief? Do you feel like the ambiguity in belief adds to the question about whether the fires were just signs for the protagonist or an overall omen for the people of the town to be aware of — especially thinking about the current state of post-Catholic Spain, where belief is spread in many directions but Catholic holidays are still held with a sort of distant respect?
MM: For me, the most beautiful thing about magical realism, or using elements that contain this kind of magic within everyday life, is that it allows us to show, in a poetic and visual way, themes and concerns that would otherwise be invisible or difficult to express.
In the short film, I found it very interesting to express this belief and fear through a fire on the mountain, which is a real concern — a fire that could affect the entire village, but that the protagonist doesn’t understand why no one else sees. I like to think of this omen as something so large, so visible, and yet no one perceives it.
This ambiguity — whether the fire is just a sign for the protagonist or a warning for the whole village — seems essential to me because it reflects the current moment, where absolute belief no longer exists in a singular way, but neither have we found a new collective outlook. The fire represents this tension: an uncomfortable truth, a warning that no one wants to see but that persists in the general silence. Today, something similar happens: we are all aware that there is a huge fire that could burn us soon, but it seems we don’t want to acknowledge or face it.
Regarding post-Catholic Spain, I believe that the more popular traditions, especially Catholic ones, still hold a certain factual power, and it seems we are afraid to question or change them. At the same time, however, we are losing those small, local beliefs inherited from our grandmothers, which had a more intimate and close magic. I think we need to return to the small, to the core, and begin questioning these large, generalized beliefs, often marked by hatred and aggression. It is in the close and simple where we find the strength to imagine another way of believing and living.
BV: The scene around the fire at the end has completely stuck in my mind since I watched it: this collective of women of different lineages, ages, and backgrounds all discarding their dried herbs into the fire. What was the emotional resonance of making this scene the emotional climax of the film, on top of representing a deeply profound and almost secretive aspect of cultural traditions? Why did you want to explore the concept of Catalan witches with their names carved into the mountains?
MM: The final scene, where we see the women gathered around the fire, turned out to have much more impact than we initially thought while filming. There is the main storyline, which is to discover what this fire is, but at the moment it is resolved, another theme emerges that transcends the story itself.
The idea of putting faces to all these “witches,” who were more in the background in the short film, felt very powerful. These women appear throughout the film, whether at the bar, by the river, or with the firefighters. They are always in the background, and they gain importance when we see them as the true protagonists of the story.
Traditions and these characters go hand in hand, representing the hidden, the primitive, the magical. The names of the witches are carved into the mountains because these mountains belong to them, because it is where they were forced to live. A place where all the people living on the margins are forced to live: deep in the forest, outside civilization.
The depths of the valleys are the habitat of these people who are not allowed to live according to the patterns of the metropolis, of society. That is why we decided this would be the ending, to highlight and give a face to the magic that lives deep in the forest.
BV: What was the filming process like for this film? How did you cast the film, and what was your favourite memory from filming?
MM: The process was very fun and very interesting. We started with the locations. I knew I wanted to shoot in the Madrona valley, at the farmhouse lost among the fields. From there, we developed the story, taking real cases of witchcraft from the 16th century and reinterpreting them in the present day. With the department heads, we scouted locations even before writing the script, because for me, the space is very important. It’s vital that all departments understand the story we’re telling and how we want to tell it.
Regarding casting, we decided that the only two professional actresses would be the leads. We did a lot of fieldwork and discovered Karin [Barbeta] and Neli [Lladó], who are magnificent. It was a difficult project to accept, as it relies heavily on silence and contemplation, and they were perfect for the roles. For the rest of the characters, we went village by village looking for people — in amateur theater classes, [amongst] friends of friends, or simply by putting up posters. That’s how we completed a hybrid cast, where the people who appear are real locals who live in the villages and understand the story as we do.
My favourite memory from the shoot was the day we filmed the village bonfire, the one for Sant Joan. To avoid spending money and to shoot as realistically as possible, we filmed on the actual night of Sant Joan. Everything you see on screen is real, almost like a documentary. It was the best way to achieve the realism we needed. It was also a lot of fun because after filming, everyone went to celebrate Sant Joan and watch the fireworks. That day, the shooting schedule was shorter so that we could all enjoy the celebration.
BV: What did it mean for you to be able to present a film so deeply tied to Catalonian folklore on the world’s stage at Cannes?
MM: For me, it is very important. In the end, this story is very local, not only because it is in Catalunya, but because it is in Northern Catalunya, a variant that is almost never represented in audiovisual media. It is something so specific and deeply rooted in a particular place [and] it has been wonderful to see how, despite this, people from all over the world have been able to connect with it and understand it. This ability to break cultural and linguistic barriers seems truly magical to me and is one of the most powerful forces of cinema.
Screening it at Cannes was, for me, both a poetic and political act. It is a clear reclaiming of stories from the margins, from those spaces and voices that are often made invisible, with different actors and diverse languages. These kinds of stories, which do not seek to please or fit into what is expected, are precisely the ones that bring authenticity and truth to cinema.
It is beautiful to see how Cannes deeply understands this need, and for that, we are profoundly grateful that they gave us the opportunity to premiere the short film there. Moreover, this experience gives us a lot of strength and motivation to keep creating from these places, which are often harder to sustain and have less visibility, but are full of stories that deserve to be told.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity
