General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Witching and Bitching

Witching and Bitching (Spanish: Las brujas de Zugarramurdi) is a 2013 Spanish-French horror comedy directed by Álex de la Iglesia, in which a gang of jewel thieves fleeing Madrid falls into the hands of a coven of Basque witches near the French border. It was written by de la Iglesia with his frequent collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarría, produced by Enrique Cerezo P.C. with La Ferme Productions, and screened out of competition at the 61st San Sebastián Film Festival and in the Midnight Madness section of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Las brujas de Zugarramurdi ("The Witches of Zugarramurdi")¹
Director and writers	Álex de la Iglesia; screenplay by de la Iglesia and Jorge Guerricaechevarría¹
Country and year	Spain, France; 2013¹
Running time	112 minutes per festival and Cineuropa listings; other sources give 110 to 119 minutes¹^•³
Release	Spain 27 September 2013; France 8 January 2014¹
Principal cast	Hugo Silva, Mario Casas, Carmen Maura, Carolina Bang, Terele Pávez, Santiago Segura, Macarena Gómez, Carlos Areces¹
Awards	Eight Goya awards in 2014, including Best Supporting Actress for Terele Pávez⁴^•¹
Reception	Metascore 73 (generally favorable); Rotten Tomatoes 83% from 30 reviews; IMDb 6.4/10 from about 16,000 votes⁵^•⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot

José (Hugo Silva) and Tony (Mario Casas) rob a Cash-for-Gold shop in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, disguised as street performers, and flee with José's young son Sergio toward the French border, with a plan to reach Disneyland.¹^•² The Spanish film registry synopsis adds a supernatural premise: the loot is a sealed bag of 25,000 wedding rings that radiates a negative energy more powerful than the Ark of the Covenant, laying a curse on the getaway taxi.³

At the border the fugitives fall into the hands of Basque witches, or sorginak, who keep up the ancient customs of their craft and of laughing at men, and who need a sacrifice for an ancient ritual.²^•⁸ Pursuing them are two hapless national police officers, Calvo (Pepón Nieto) and Pacheco (Secun de la Rosa), and José's controlling ex-wife.³^•⁹ Carmen Maura plays the coven's matriarch Graciana and Terele Pávez plays Marichu; the cast also includes Carolina Bang as the witch Eva, Jaime Ordóñez, Macarena Gómez, Javier Botet, Santiago Segura as the cross-dressing Miren, and Carlos Areces as Conchi.³^•¹⁰

Production

The film is a Spain-France co-production, about 90 percent Spanish and 10 percent French, made by Enrique Cerezo Producciones Cinematográficas with La Ferme Productions and ARTE France Cinéma, with the participation of TVE.³ Shooting ran from 1 October to 5 December 2012.³ It was shot in Navarra and Madrid.¹⁰ Kiko de la Rica was the cinematographer, Joan Valent composed the score, and Pablo Blanco edited.¹ Cinegraph lists the budget as $8.0 million.⁸

The title village, Zugarramurdi in Navarre, is a real place with a recorded history of witch persecution: six of its accused witches were burned in an auto-da-fé (public ritual sentencing heretics, often burning) at Logroño in 1610, during what one regional account describes as the largest, longest and last witch hunt in the history of the Spanish Inquisition.¹¹

Festivals and release

The film premiered in 2013 on the festival circuit. It screened in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival, in the official selection out of competition at San Sebastián, and at Austin Fantastic Fest.¹^•¹⁰ It was nominated for the People's Choice Award in the Midnight Madness section at Toronto.¹² It opened in Spain on 27 September 2013 and in France on 8 January 2014.¹ In the United States, IFC Films released it, with a listed US release date of September 2013 and a Metacritic-listed US theatrical date of 13 June 2014.⁸^•¹³

Awards

At the 2014 Goya Awards, the Spanish film academy's prizes, the film won eight Goyas.⁴ According to Cineuropa, the awards it won were for artistic direction, costume design, editing, sound, special effects, supporting actress (Terele Pávez), and director of production (Carlos Bernases).¹ It was also nominated for Best Original Score and Best Cinematography.¹²

Reception

Professional critics received the film favorably. Its Metascore of 73 on Metacritic is based on nine positive and one mixed review, with no negative reviews.⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 83% Tomatometer from 30 reviews, with a critics consensus calling it "dark, nasty, and delightfully subversive... gross-out genre fun with a heaping helping of warped comedy"; audience approval there is lower, at 60% from over 1,000 ratings.⁶ IMDb users give it 6.4 out of 10 from about 16,000 votes.⁷

Critical response. Reviewers consistently highlighted the film's energy and tonal blend. The New York Times found that the buddy comedy, gross-out humor and horror elements "make for a harmonious mix" under a director who rarely lets the pace flag.⁵ The Dissolve's David Ehrlich described it as moving "from Reservoir Dogs to From Dusk Till Dawn with a lunatic's grace," resolving into a gory war between men and the literalized image of how the worst men see women.⁵ Roger Moore, writing for McClatchy-Tribune, called it "the best Almodovar movie Almodovar never made."⁵ Recurring criticisms concerned length and thinness: RogerEbert.com called it "overlong, and conceptually thin" while still "freakishly energetic," and the New Orleans Times-Picayune called it "a bit overlong, and prone to meandering."

Screen's Fionnuala Halligan, reviewing at San Sebastián, took a more reserved view, calling the film an "uneasy marriage" of an absurdist heist comedy and full-on horror, and finding its attitude toward women at times "troublingly hostile," moving "from the darkly jocular to ill-concealed anger."¹⁰ The Wee Review, covering its Glasgow Film Festival 2014 screening, judged that the director got "the pitch between comedy and horror just right" but that the film topples "under the weight of its own ideas."

Themes and interpretation

The film stages the battle of the sexes in deliberately extreme terms: men complain about women, and women are witches who eat men alive.¹⁰ ScreenHub read the caricature as two-sided satire, arguing that the performances keep neither the men's status as sympathetic victims nor the women's as aggressors intact, and that the film both embraces and challenges the gender stereotypes it draws on.¹⁴ The Video Librarian review made a comparable point, noting that a case could be made for the film being anti-woman, but that, as in Pedro Almodóvar's cinema (some of whose regular actors appear, notably Carmen Maura), no gender escapes unscathed.⁹

De la Iglesia himself framed the film's women as figures of power. In a 2013 Cineuropa interview he said that famous and important women appear in the film, including Greta Garbo, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Frida Kahlo and Simone de Beauvoir, calling this "a declaration of intent" about "women who inspire respect, fascination and fear."

Academic work has taken up the film as well: a University of St Andrews thesis on female suffering and spectatorship ethics lists it among contemporary witch films, and a 2025 study of the monstrous-feminine in Spanish horror analyzes the film alongside de la Iglesia's series 30 Coins.¹⁵^•¹⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Comedy horror films › 2000s and 2010s comedy horror films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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