Crow Girl

Crow Girl is a folk horror drama adapted from an original short story by the author. Set in 1800s Devon, it tells the story of Martha, a profoundly deaf girl, the illegitimate child of a Romany woman, who is found in a hedgerow as a baby and adopted by a farming couple, Sally and Jonah Watts. She is provided for materially but not emotionally and her main companions are the birds, particularly a crow which she rescues as a fledgling. When Martha goes to a fair, she has a sexual encounter with a pedlar which results in a pregnancy. The local priest, James Banbury, tells her adoptive parents she must leave the village and she has to move to an abandoned cottage in the woods. In order to survive, she falls into sex work with two of the local villagers and is later abused by the priest. When the baby is born the priest and villagers conspire to take it away from her and Asa, a local woman, takes care of it. Martha goes to confront the congregation in church, pointing at the men who have abused her. Anger and suspicion grows in the village as to who the child's father is and one man, Tom, is targeted by the villagers for a 'stag hunt', a Devon tradition, which results in his death. Asa asks a local fortune teller for advice and is told she must abandon the baby at a local landmark, the Witch's Stone, which is linked with stories of child sacrifice. The male villagers group together to do a 'skimmity ride' (a shaming ritual with effigies and rough music) attacking Martha but are driven away by crows, which mass around them after being summoned by Martha. The priest is killed by the crows and the fortune teller, who is Martha's mother, rescues the baby and secretly returns her to Martha. The end of the film shows Martha living peacefully with her son, now a respected local healer, and feeding her birds in the forest.