Decades after a family tragedy, Šarlota returns to her quaint Slovakian hometown riddled with a toxic mix of patriarchal structures and blind superstition. A witch is still said to live in the deep, dark forest nearby—and to have made pacts with Šarlota’s family in the past. Not before long, the young woman and her friend Mira, also an outsider, become the target of some townsfolk’s hostility. In her second feature, Tereza Nvotová reenvisions classical depictions of witches and conjures the natural potency in femininity as an essential force to confront prevailing gender and power relations.