Maleficarum

MALEFICARUM was more than I had expected. Jac Avila, the director, has made an unforgettable and important film. The actors, especially Amy Hesketh and Mila Joya, totally sold it. Avila's direction and the women's performances made their plight horribly believable, completely real, and yet heroic. Several scenes are going to keep replaying in my mind. Having the Inquisition torture scenes interrupted by the "reality show" testimonies (based on real witness documents from the historic case upon which the film is based), kept me from becoming numb to the brutality of what was happening. If the director feels as I do about the insanity of the Inquisition, he drove that message straight to the heart. But incredibly, this is also a love story, defiant love facing hopeless horror. And because this is real life historical horror, you can't squirm out of it with that "it's only a movie" schtick. It's even made to feel like a documentary of sorts, and in my opinion, this is as real as a film about this subject can get. All praise to everyone involved for their determination to make it that way. This film does not pull its punches or make excuses. Avila is an important director, folks. Believe it.

Many film were produced on behalf of the Holy Iquistion and their extremely brutal ways of obtaining a confession .... Most of them were exploring rather the side of the fault, the trial testimony, judgement, and finally, the punishment! They represented all of it, with very few torture scenes! Jac Avila brings us, with his film Maleficarum (2011), in the depths of dark dungeons and explore more thoroughly the torments inflicted on the victims.

Each of the torture scenes are incredibly realistic and the acting is excellent and especially that of Amy Hesketh.

The story of two women in love with each other, falsely accused facing the Holy Inquisition .... A must see movie ....

Maleficarum (2011) by Jac Avila is a good screen play by an independent Bolivian film company. It is a good historical fiction loosely based on María Francisca Ana de Castro, a Spanish immigrant to Alta Peru, who was renowned for her beauty and wealth. She was arrested and accused of "judaizing". After many days of Torture before confessing; She was burned at the stake in 1726. This event was a major spectacle in Lima, but it raised questions about possible irregular procedures and about the corruption within the Inquisition, this lead to the end of The Holy Office (The Inquisition) in Peru. The director, Jac Avila, and actors try to recreated the actual realistic suffering in great detail of what the victims of the Spanish Inquisition had to endure. The best was the director's use of the actors' facial and body language, it was very cerebral and visual at the same time. This viewer marveled at the simplicity of that movie and how it got its complex message across, the script and the story plot was very well thought out. The dialogs of the accusers and witnesses did well in showing the bias and superstitions of that time.

Maleficarum is getting a lot of attention. This is a review that appeared online: "A pretty powerful and disturbing movie: Disturbing because the film doesn't really hold back in its many torture scenes, some of which are less than easy to stomach, but powerful because despite all the torture, the film manages to tell a rich story full of interesting characters, it manages to make the love between the two tortured girls who go through hell together rather than betraying one another, and the direction (successfully) aims for atmosphere rather than sleaze.

To put it shortly, a very nice, well-made film. Recommended – but for above reasons probably not for everybody." Mike Haberfelner (re)Search My Trash

This is a very remarkable film for its total restraint in depicting a story of extreme outrage. It brings associations directly to the Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer and his films, especially "The Day of Wrath" 1943, but maybe more specifically to "The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc", since this is also a close-up of the martyrdom of woman, in this instance even doubly so, since there are two. The story in itself is the ghastliest possible, the two young ladies prosecuted by the inquisition for forbidden love being tortured one by one while the other one is forced to look on in increasingly accelerating cruelty to extract a forced confession of witchery. When the confession finally is accomplished, they are subjected to no less severe punishment none the less in a total judicial murder, just because of the greed of the church to obtain the property of the one young ladý who from her parents has inherited the greatest fortune in Peru - this is somewhere around 1700. The film is accompanied all through by the most intimately pleasing chamber music, mainly guitar, which enhances the grotesqueness of the terror proceedings even more.

The director Jac Avila from Bolivia is also the writer and the producer of the film, and it is definitely a masterpiece, with the vital contribution of Amy Hesketh as the main victim - her acting is quite comparable with Maria Falconetti's in "The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc". Still, the torture scenes, that never cease to get worse and seem more endless each time, must make this film unbearable to many, and it's impossible for anyone, I think, not to look away more often than not. A masterpiece of a genius making a deep and lasting impression - an unforgettable film, that however you would not like to see again. The impression is too strong not to leave you almost as branded as the victims.