10-year-old Jovan is often escaping the reality to immerse himself into a fantasy world. It all changes when he befriends his new classmate Milica and the adventure to hunt her ‘witch‘ stepmother starts.​

The Witch Hunters is not the film you are expecting. And just like the protagonists, we discover its reality more quickly than we would like to. But in this case, it’s a good thing. Let me explain.

The film follows Jovan, a 10-year-old boy tirelessly working to overcome his partial cerebral palsy, and as a result remains isolated from his peers. His alter ego is Shade, a blue suit-donning superhero who embodies everything Jovan wishes he could be–most importantly, a different physical body.

But things start to change when Milica, a troubled girl who is seemingly fearless, is a new student in Jovan’s class who pursues a friendship with him, and discloses a secret that she’s been terrified of: her father has been placed under the spell of a witch. After all, she saw her drinking weird juices, storing alien-like substances in jars, and sprinkling black salt on her father’s food. Not-so-spoiler alert: her dad fell for a yoga instructor.

As they work together to stop the “witch,” Milica reveals a vulnerability that is usually hidden, and Jovan channels his personal superhero fantasy that empowers him more than he ever had been before. Ultimately, The Witch Hunters is a story of acceptance, whether that be oneself or life’s inevitability.

The film’s whimsicality and dark humor make its adult audience laugh nostalgically at the utter silliness of Milica and Jovan’s theories, as well as the ones we had as kids. Despite the children’s overactive imaginations, the film is hyperrealistic, from the tone to the relationships between the characters. And even then their fantasies are shattered by reality, whether that be realizing your disability will affect you forever, or that your parents are splitting up because of an affair instead of being bewitched. Accepting the inevitable at such a young age is a tough pill to swallow, even for outside observers, and much like a Roald Dahl novel, The Witch Hunters doesn’t patronize anyone, or pander to the unrealistic utopia that parents instill into their children’s minds.

I’m not sure if the young actor portraying Jovan (Mihajlo Milavic) actually has cerebral palsy or not, considering how realistic his symptoms were–if he does, kudos to more disabled actors getting work. Especially Milavic, who delivers a sympathetic performance as our underdog protagonist, particularly during a heartbreaking scene where he cries for a different body while attempting to walk up a set of stairs in physical therapy. (I’m not crying, you’re crying.)

We all know what to expect at the end of The Witch Hunters, so the conclusion does have a bit of an after-school-special feeling to it, but more than anything, all we want is for these kids to be happy and to enjoy life, just as we always wanted to.